'Experiments shouldn't disrupt balance'

Bangladesh dropped down a place in the ICC T20I rankings to stand at number eleven after their two consecutive defeats against Zimbabwe at Khulna.  This was one frustrating statistic apart from their disappointment over sharing the four-match T20I series against Zimbabwe, who came here following ODI and T20I series defeats to Afghanistan.

As it was a series of experimentation for the Tigers, chief selector Faruque Ahmed was not keen to focus too much on the results or the demotion in the rankings but the former national skipper raised a question about the manner in which the team management chose to go about experimenting during the series.

“Expectations are high but the reality is that we are not good in T20 cricket as we are in ODI cricket. It was not a series where we set our target to win; rather our focus was experiment with the composition of the side. It's not like we were in the top spot and the series loss took us to the bottom, so I am not interested in the rankings. We are now searching for a good combination; it will not be achieved overnight and will take some time to find the right one,” said Faruque.

“But we should be careful about what experimenting actually means. My personal opinion is you should not experiment by disrupting the balance of the team, which is what happened, especially in the third game against Zimbabwe. You can try one or two players in a game to discover alternatives like we did before the 2015 World Cup,” he continued.

Faruque however said that there were some positives in the drawn series and he reserved high praise for Sabbir Rahman's efforts in the series and the way the right-hander capitalised on his promotion to the top order.

“I don't think our experiment was totally unfruitful. We tried some new players and got some ideas about them, though it's too early to come to any conclusion about any player. See, Sohan (Nurul Hasan) did a decent job behind the stumps and I am really impressed with the batting of Sabbir up the order. Actually we have to find the right combination if we want to be a strong team in this format. At this moment I am not thinking about Bangladesh's result in T20 cricket; I am looking forward to shape a good, competitive team,” said Faruque.

With the current state of affairs, how can Bangladesh achieve a measure of T20 success? Faruque has a very simple recipe for that.

“Our style of playing is not suiting this format.  For example we don't have big hitters who can change the complexion of the game batting at number five or six. So we can play to our strengths.  We can improve our bowling and fielding. And in batting we should be calculating instead of trying to hit every ball,” he suggested.

Bangladesh will now start the long preparation in Khulna and Chittagong for the Asia Cup and the ICC World Twenty20 and play some practice matches among themselves so that the team management can get some more ideas before the two mega events. The chief selector however cautioned against any high expectations from T20 cricket for the moment.