Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman is clean bowled during the second innings of their second Test against New Zealand in Wellington on Tuesday. — AFP photo
A senior official of the Bangladesh Cricket Board on Wednesday hoped that the dismal performance of the national cricket team in the ongoing series in New Zealand would not affect them during the forthcoming World Cup in United Kingdom.
Bangladesh have lost all three one-day internationals in New Zealand and have already surrendered the three-Test series, having lost the first two Tests, respectively by an innings and 52 runs and an innings and 12 runs.
The last defeat in the Wellington Test, when rain washed out the opening two days play before Bangladesh succumbed to defeat in just seven sessions, took a serious blow on the morale of the side.
The ill-timing of the series just weeks before the World Cup scheduled to start on May 30 also affected Bangladesh players physically as several players complained of injuries.
Batsman Mushfiqur Rahim missed the first two Tests for injury while promising young batsman Mohammad Mithun also missed an ODI game for the same reason.
Opening batsman Tamim Iqbal had complained of a fitness problem before the second Test while Bangladesh had to use pacer Mustafizur Rahman carefully considering the significance of his presence in the World Cup.
It was feared that the demoralising series in New Zealand might affect Bangladeshi players psychologically in the UK, where condition during the World Cup would remain almost the same.
But the BCB media committee chairman Jalal Yunus insisted that it might not be all the same in the UK.
‘I don’t think these [the results in New Zealand] will make too much of problems,’ Jalal said while speaking to reporters on the sideline of a programme at a city hotel.
‘This thing can happen in cricket. One series will go wrong and another will be good. There will be consistency so as inconsistency,’ Jalal added.
Jalal attributed Bangladesh’s poor results in New Zealand to lack of preparation, conditions and injury but said that the Tigers should not make their inexperience as an excuse.
‘You know that we had a lack of preparation,’ he said. ‘The weather was a big factor. The injury also plays a factor in the series as some key players could not play. Mushfiq is yet to play [in the Test series] and Sakib [al Hasan] wasn’t also there. These things play key roles in team’s poor performance,’ he said.
After the humiliating loss in Wellington Test, Bangladesh’s interim skipper Mahmudullah indicated that they suffered from a kind of mental blackness, which denied them any momentum at any stage of the series, but Jalal, himself a former national player, did not agree with him completely.
‘I think mental things are a big challenge in this stage,’ he said. ‘But we are playing for a long time. This was not the first time we went to New Zealand. We went to South Africa and Australia also and played in many big series. I don’t think the mental block is a big problem here,’ he said.
Source: New Age.
