Focus on pace on spinning wickets
A stark difference awaited the Tigers in their first training camp ahead of the Pakistan series yesterday. It may have been an optional session with just six players taking part, but it was enough to display how different the upcoming training sessions would be compared to the ones for the World Cup.
The granite boards, which helped the Tigers practise against the extra bounce, were nowhere to be seen. In the nets, there were a bunch of left-arm pacers piling in those bouncers against the national batsmen. With left-arm pacers dominating Pakistan's attack, one can expect to witness plenty more of such sessions in the coming days. The players who sweated it out yesterday morning were Taskin Ahmed, Rubel Hossain, Rony Talukdar, Mahmudullah Riyad and Soumya Sarkar.
Mushfiqur Rahim, Arafat Sunny, Abul Hasan, Sabbir Rahman, Nasir Hossain, Mominul Haque and Tamim Iqbal will join the camp today along with Shakib Al Hasan, who returned from India yesterday.
One of the more successful players in the World Cup, Rubel will have a different challenge this time around. While he got plenty of assistance from the pitches down under, he may have to work twice as hard to dominate in Mirpur; amidst conditions which are expected to support the spinners.
"There isn't much time left for us. We have to get used to bowling pace on spin-friendly wickets again. That's what we focussed on during training," said Rubel. "The whole team wasn't available due to the BCL final so there wasn't much pressure in training… I tried batting a bit as well and practised my favourite shot… the cover drive," he added gleefully.
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