Najmul Hossain Shanto, as a full time captain, sets his goal to lead Bangladesh to claim a big trophy, something which is still missing.
The Bangladesh men’s team so far won an International trophy when they became champions in a tri-nation tournament in Ireland ahead of the ICC World Cup 2019 . Apart from this, they came close to winning the Asia Cup trophy several times but just couldn’t seal the deal.
However, Shanto believes a well devised plan could help them to end their trophy drought.
“We have been doing well in ODI cricket but as a team we haven’t won any big trophy as of now. We would have to plan well on how we can play well in big tournaments and win a trophy,” Shanto said in his first interaction with the media as the full-time captain of Bangladesh at Sylhet International Cricket Stadium today, Sunday.
He said that Bangladesh though showed progress, they would have to work hard still to be a good team in Test format.
“I don’t think we have improved much in Test format but we have started doing well in fact. Now what I want is to win matches at home and at the same time we want to show fighting spirit in away Tests. I want the players to understand the importance of Test cricket,” he added.
Often being touted as the vulnerable side, Bangladesh showed considerable progress in T20 cricket in the last two years. The Tigers have been unbeaten in the last five bilateral T20 series-while they won against the teams like UAE, England, Ireland and Afghanistan, they drew a T20 series on New Zealand soil.
Shanto wants to keep that consistency to make them a giant in this format.
“We have improved much in the T20 format. But we want to take us in a position so that we can win in any condition in the world,” he said.
“It is important to do well in all three formats consistently. I hope all players will contribute and help the team to achieve success,” he added.
Shanto, however, didn’t feel that the burden of captaincy will affect his performance as he believes he needs to score, whatever he is.
“You have to score, no matter whether you are captain or not. I feel at first I am the batter of the team; so my duty is to score runs as much as I can. Then I am captain and so I need to look after all the things.”
Shanto himself hasn’t been in runs during the just concluded Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) but he said he fixed some important things which he believes would help him to get back amongst runs in the Sri Lanka series.
“Just I had a bad phase during BPL. I worked on some issues, hopefully it will work and I will get back to runs in the coming series,” he concluded.