According to the head coach of Bangladesh, Russell Domingo, the team’s inability to learn from their “frustrating” blunders cost them the one-day international series against Zimbabwe.
On Sunday, Zimbabwe defeated Bangladesh by a score of five wickets to win the One-Day International series with one game left to play. The victory allowed Zimbabwe to capture the series despite having one game remaining.
Zimbabwe was able to complete its run chase of 291 with 15 balls remaining, despite suffering an early loss of wickets and overcoming a poor scoring rate. The hosts were able to take the series for the first time since 2013 thanks to a fifth-wicket stand of 201 runs between Sikandar Raza and Regis Chakabva, which reversed the tide of the match. Even in the first game, Zimbabwe chased down more than 300 runs despite having difficulty at one point in the game; Sikandar and Innocent Kaia had then fashioned a spectacular comeback at that time in the game.
“It is quite aggravating to witness the mistakes, both as a coach and as management, because we appear to be making them more frequently than we should. Domingo told reporters after the second game in Harare that “under pressure players seem to repeat the same error and it is an area of concern for us.” “We talked about it and we are trying to work on it but then under pressure players seem to make the same mistake”
“They were 16 for 3 and 40 for 4 at that point in both games, but the players just couldn’t handle the pressure well enough to win. There were far too many soft balls, far too many balls bowled to the wrong field, and far too many incorrect selections chosen. The boys are putting in an effort, but they are not gaining knowledge very rapidly, and they continue to make the same errors over and over again. This is a really upsetting development. They are putting in a lot of effort, but for some reason they are unable to learn from their past errors and they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again; in these circumstances, excellent teams and talented players will punish you. They have been punished in the last two games by four extremely superb hundreds scored against them.”
Domingo stated that their side did not allow themselves to become complacent when competing against the hosts, and that the primary distinction between their teams was the former’s inability to build large partnerships.
“Not even an ounce of complacency. We have been talking about how dangerous this specific team is, and the previous year we won the series 3-0; nevertheless, there were actually two close games, and we won the T20 Internationals 2-1; so, complacency was never an issue for us, as the South African stated.
We didn’t score any hundreds, but we did get a lot of 50s and a lot of 40s, but nobody batted for a long enough time to form a significant partnership.
With the World Cup still over a year and a half away, there are some invaluable lessons for both the coaching staffs and the players. We were outplayed in both of these most recent games, but luckily they don’t count for points, so we can look at it as a tremendous learning experience,” he said. “We were lucky that these games don’t count for anything.
Domingo went on to say that credit should go to Zimbabwe because they outplayed Bangladesh in both of the matches.
“I believe that credit needs to be given to Zimbabwe, and Sikandar in particular since he played extraordinarily well,” said the Zimbabwean player. Two of the better one-day hundreds you will come across when the game is being played under duress. Look, we are probably aware that we left 20 runs out yesterday, and maybe 20 runs out today… we could have gotten more, and it is very difficult to defend in the afternoon, and Zimbabwe absolutely deserves the win because they outplayed us on both days. No excuses,” remarked Domingo.
