'No room for complacency'

Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza has said that he wants the Tigers to utilise the Zimbabwe series in order to move away from the perennial pains of T20 cricket.

With the Asia Cup T20 and the ICC World Twenty20 knocking at the door, the Bangladesh skipper not only wants to win the series but also wants Bangladesh to finalise their T20 squad.

"We barely play two or three T20 matches in a year. We don't really get a chance to think about our performance levels. We lost against Zimbabwe in the last T20, so there's really no room to be complacent," said Mashrafe during the pre-match press conference.

"This is the only opportunity for us to try and test things out because we have the Asia Cup and the World Cup after this. Playing the qualifiers in the World Cup is going to be crucial and this is the best possible opportunity for us to step out of the troubles that we have been having in this format," he added.

The series was initially supposed to include two Tests. However, both the boards mutually agreed to play four T20Is in order to get as much practice as possible for the World Cup. While Mashrafe admitted that he was disappointed to see the Tests being postponed, he believes that the circumstances compelled the boards to take the decision.

"I don't think there can be any alternative to Test matches. T20 cricket is given importance by other teams as well, not just Bangladesh. But their schedules are fixed three years in advance. That is a very important thing, considering that we don't know who we will play in the next six months.

"If you want the overall development of your cricket you need to play Test cricket, there is no alternative. But at the moment, we have two big tournaments up ahead and in a sense, we are being forced to play T20 cricket," said Mashrafe.

"We don't have many performances that we can look up to in this format. In fact we are behind Afghanistan as well. We have to keep these issues in mind when play Zimbabwe," he added.

Not many of Bangladesh's national players managed to perform during the Bangladesh Premier League. The batters especially had a rough time throughout the competition. Mashrafe though believes that the players are a lot more confident following the practice sessions.

"I think they are hitting the ball a lot better than before and are more confident. The wickets in the BPL weren't good for batting. I don't think such wickets are present in any other parts of the world, especially at this moment.

"In India scores of 170 and 180 occur regularly. One of our targets will be to ensure that we understand what a good score is on a particular wicket. I hope we can get to know that after batting one over," explained Mashrafe.