Bangladesh lost only three ODI series at home since the 2015 World Cup and two of them came this year itself. The series loss against Afghanistan came as a shock but head coach Chandika Hathurusingha is happy with the preparation ahead of the six-team Asia Cup starting on 30 August.
Bangladesh will again face Afghanistan but before that they have to lock horns with co-hosts Sri Lanka. According to Hathurusingha and captain Shakib Al Hasan, they are thinking only about these two games and will take one match at a time.
“Our aim is to qualify for the second round first,” said Hathurusingha. “As you said, we are playing in Sri Lanka against Sri Lanka. They’re a very good team at their home conditions. And then, we are playing Afghanistan in Pakistan and lately, they played here and they won the series. So, there are big challenges, but we are up for that challenge.”
Shakib, who has been appointed as the team’s full-time ODI captain after a gap of 12 years, said, “We are thinking about the Asia Cup only, the Afghanistan and Sri Lanka games to be precise. We will think about the World Cup later.”
Shakib Al Hasan, Towhid Hridoy, Litton Das and Shakib Al Hasan played the Lanka Premier League (LPL) recently in Sri Lanka and the rest of the players of the squad have been part of a special fitness and skill camp since the start of this month.
“The preparation, actually, I’m very, very happy. We had a really good lead-up with the fitness and the medical at the start. And then in the middle individual skill development was there for about seven days. And then after that, the next seven days were more tactical and role-based training. And then the last five days were more for individual players, what they wanted to do,” Hathurusingha said.
“We ended up with a practice game, which was the first time I have done practice games with many teams. The last game was one of the rare ones where they actually competed till the last ball until I asked them to come off, and we finished at around 10:30. So, I’m very happy about that,” he added.
Shakib didn’t get to train with the team and got the chance to speak to his teammates only once before attending the press conference. But he doesn’t think it’s a problem. “I didn’t need to talk much. I have known most of them for a long time. A lot of them have played under me and vice versa. I don’t think it will be difficult to adjust.”
“There are some new players, yes. But I know them well. Everyone knows his job. We are trying to create a culture here and every player knows what he has to do,” Shakib said.
