No more chasing ghosts for the Tigers

“We need to make sure we don't plan with names in mind.”

A member of the selection panel casually uttered these words while sitting in the chair with a cup of coffee in his hand at the hotel lobby on Thursday.

The former national batter explained it after giving a sip to his coffee.

“When we saw names like Mitchell Marsh and Tim David among others in the T20 squad we felt like we needed to score 200 runs somehow to challenge them,” he said.

“But truly speaking it was not a wicket for 200 runs, rather it was a wicket of 160 or 170 runs and if we could plan for it and managed to put that kind of a score in that case we could have seen a different result,” he noted.

“I don't think the wicket will change drastically in the next two games and if that is the case we need to assess it and plan, rather than opting to put up a huge score and in the process suffer for taking that extra risk to get close to that score,” he added. 

While Australia had an optional training session on Thursday it was not the case for the hosts as they decided to have a rest day.

It is understood that during the team meeting, this planning issue will surely be up for discussion, considering that it made them pay in the opening game of the T20 series that they lost by four wickets to go one-down in the series.

The Tigers were bowled out for 131 runs in 19 overs and it seems their disappointment started to creep in after watching the Australian batting as it looked another 30 runs could have made a whole lot of difference.

“We did not understand that even in T20 Internationals you need to make use of overs 7-15 and that is where we failed miserably,” said another member of the team management.

“Litton (Das) usually does that thing for us (prepare a platform between 7-15 overs)  and we missed him badly but you cannot give that as an excuse because others need to step up,” he said.

“We didn't even bat our full quota of 20 overs as we were bundled out by 19 overs and it's disappointing to say the least,” he added.

Bangladesh team management would be keen to make their batting unit understand that they need to play according to the norms of shorter-format cricket that does not necessarily mean hitting fours and sixes in every delivery.

For if the home team repeat the same mistakes, it might very well enable Australia to clinch the series with one game in hand.