Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha was frustrated by the team’s poor preparation ahead of the Ireland series and said that had the team known before about the poor scheduling of the series, they wouldn’t have come to play.
Although it’s Ireland’s home series, it is taking place in Chelmsford, England. The series is taking place at the start of the English summer, when there is either rain or a cloud cover on most days.
Bangladesh’s training in England has been marred by the rain and gloomy weather, as they didn’t get to train everyday and also their lone practice match got washed out.
Hathurusingha is not satisfied with his team’s training for the series, “It’s a very unique situation. We are playing Ireland in England. Normally it doesn’t happen very often so I can’t blame anyone. Because this is the first time. If we knew we wouldn’t have agreed to this kind of schedule. Because it’s not ideal preparation.”
The Tigers had their first training session at the match venue on Tuesday. Earlier, they had to train in a local school ground for two days.
Hathurusingha and his players had just one day to suss out the pitch.
The Sri Lankan coach expects a good batting pitch in the first ODI, “It looked like the wicket is very good. It’s very hard underneath. It has a little tinge of green. That’s maybe because it was coverd for the last two days because of rain.”
Hathurusingha was relaxed about the team combination as he said having two genuine all-rounders in Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan Miraz has made things a lot easier for him.
“He (Miraz) is actually a genuine batter because he has got a Test hundred and an ODI hundred. So we can treat him as a genuine all-rounder. We have another genuine all-rounder in Shakib Al Hasan. So we are very fortunate. Whatever combination we want we can go with it.”