'No point pondering over oppositions'

Bangladesh have been pitted in a tough group in the upcoming ICC Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies and the United States in June as the ICC revealed the tournament groups and fixtures yesterday.

The Tigers have been drawn in Group D alongside South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and Nepal and will begin their campaign against the Sri Lankans on June 7 in Dallas, USA.

Bangladesh will then face the Proteas in New York on June 10 before taking on the Dutch and Nepal in St. Vincent on June 13 and 16 respectively.

The top two teams of the group will move on to the Super Eight, meaning the Tigers will be vying against two Test-playing nations and a potent Dutch team, who defeated them in the ODI World Cup last year, for a spot in the second round.

However, selector and former captain Habibul Bashar feels there is no point in worrying too much about the makeup of the groups.

"To be honest, nothing is ever easy in a World Cup. So, there is no point thinking about which group we are in," Bashar told The Daily Star yesterday.

According to the Future Tours Programme (FTP), Bangladesh will play eight T20Is this year ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup – three at home against Sri Lanka in March and five against Zimbabwe in April.

With so few T20Is left before the World Cup, five of them being against a team that could not even qualify for the tournament, Bashar hopes that the forthcoming 10th edition of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), scheduled to begin on January 19, will help the players prepare for the tournament and discover new talents.

"We also have the BPL coming up. As we have gotten a few players through BPL in the past, I am hopeful about this time too," Bashar said.

Bangladesh's record in T20 World Cups has been consistently poor, with just two victories in the last edition in Australia held in 2022.

Bashar did not want to raise expectations too much but hoped that the Tigers will utilise the conditions in the US and the West Indies to their advantage.

"We may have done well in the recent past, but we are still not a proper T20 side… We will be playing in the West Indies and the US and from my experience, the pitches there are relatively slower which will suit us. But then again, we need to play our best cricket to perform better than we have in the past few ICC events."

The 20-team tournament will begin on June 1 in Dallas with a match between the US and Canada.

The Super Eight stage will start on June 19. The tournament will draw to a close on June 29 with the final in Barbadose.