Bangladesh captain Mashrafee bin Murtaza (L) and his Zimbabwean counterpart Elton Chigumbura pose with the Walton Twenty20 trophy at Hotel City Inn in Khulna on Thursday.
Bangladesh captain Mashrafee bin Murtaza is ready to gamble with their tried and tested formula in their home series against Zimbabwe to find the best possible Twenty20 combination for the forthcoming Asia Cup and World Twenty20.
The hosts take on Zimbabwe in their first of four Twenty20 international matches starting today at the Sheikh Abu Naser Stadium in Khulna.
The hosts are firm favourites to win the four-match series but they are more concerned to find their areas of strength in the shortest format of the game as they are looking beyond the series.
Tigers are keeping an eye on the inaugural T20 edition of the Asia Cup followed by the ICC Twenty 20 World Cup scheduled to begin in India on February 9.
‘Win will be our major focus but at the same time we need to focus on a lot of other things,’ Mashrafee told reporters in Khulna on Thursday.
‘We are trying to fix some positions despite keeping the combinations fairly intact.
‘We will pick up a combination that might earn us a win or might not. But we feel it is the right time to see all of our options,’ he said.
Bangladesh included three uncapped players — Shuvagata Hom, Nurul Hasan and Abu Hider in the squad to suggest Tigers’ mindset, that seemed to be ready to welcome a change.
‘We are thinking about something that will help us in our forthcoming tournaments [Asia Cup and World Twenty20],’ said Mashrafee.
‘Everyone in the squad is in with a chance but we won’t do anything that looks odd,’ he said.
‘But we need to do something different. As a result, we have to experiment so that we can come out of Twenty20 failure,’ he said.
Twenty20 is considered to be Tigers’ weakest link as they are ranked number 10th in ICC T20 rankings behind ICC associate nation Afghanistan.
On the other hand, Tigers opponent Zimbabwe are ranked 14th in the table to provide an example of their difference in calibre in recent times.
Zimbabwe is currently having a low in confidence as they arrived in Bangladesh after being beaten by Afghanistan.
However, Mashrafee is not ready to take everything for granted.
‘We are aware that they will start everything new leaving behind the disappointment,’ said Mashrafee.
‘We were beaten in our last T20 against them and we are aware that we need to out play them. We cannot take them lightly,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe skipper Elton Chigumbura warned Tigers by announcing they are ready to start afresh with an eye on the ICC World Twenty20 while he asked his batsmen to take up responsibilities.
‘We had a bad series in UAE. We had couple of new guys in the team. This is a big series for us to make sure we can bounce back from the UAE’, said Chigumbura.
‘We just have to make sure we take it one game at a time and make sure we play good cricket, especially with the bat.
‘We were disappointing with our batting in the last series,’ he said.
Zimbabwe recalled Hamilton Masakadza and Brian Vitori for the series and Chigumbura is confident the experience of the duo will give them a morale boost.
‘They [Masakadza and Vitori] are experienced and played here before. Good to have their contribution in this tour. Hamilton is showing good signs since coming back.
‘The other guys like Vitori will be looking to try to raise their game to stay in the team. Sibanda is also there. They are hungry to stay in the team. It is a good combination of guys with different motivations,’ he said.
Source: New Age
