'Mental muscles need more development'
While it is beyond doubt that Bangladesh have improved substantially in international cricket over the last four years, there have been questions about the players' mental strength. It only grew louder when they lost their sixth final in last month's Asia Cup from a dominant position against India. Perhaps that is what persuaded the Bangladesh Cricket Board to fly in Bangladesh-born sports psychologist Ali Azhar Khan from Canada to have a two-day session with the team that ended yesterday.
After conducting his second session at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday Azhar, who had also worked with the Tigers in 2014, said there has been marked improvement in the players' self-belief but the mental muscles needed to develop more in crunch situations.
"They have changed a lot from how they were before," Azhar told reporters yesterday. "They have much more self-belief and have become mentally stronger. But they aren't able to hold on to that when the weight of the boat gets heavier with the shore in sight. We have to bring out our latent talent more, which of course is a skill that needs to be practised. These mental muscles will develop when we practise this skill on a daily basis.
"It is possible because we have the experience of beating everyone. When this belief becomes stronger the consistency will improve. When we come close [to winning] in these tournaments, the pressure of expectations increase and if the mental muscle is not strong we cannot sustain it."
He stressed the importance of body language, citing Soumya Sarkar's last ball to India's Dinesh Karthik -- who hit a six when five were needed in the last ball -- in the Nidahas Trophy final in March as an example.
"If you saw the batsman's body language at that time, you would have realised how much self-belef he possessed. When I was watching Soumya, I felt like the match would slip out of his hand, because I could see the absence of that psychology. If I could have reminded him of that body language and to keep up the self-talk... because thinking about what would happen if you lose brings stress. We have been talking about the formulas for the last two days. There are many ingredients to mental fitness; it is about bringing them all together.
"The players always seem inspired during these sessions and they want them more often but with time it goes away. Just like physical fitness lasts because of routine fitness work, we should also incorporate psychological fitness into our routines. If not as a regular fixture, these sessions should happen more often."