Nic Pothas, an assistant coach for Bangladesh’s national cricket team, stated unequivocally that the team did not perform well at the batting crease against Pakistan in the first Super Four match of the ongoing Asia Cup 2023, which resulted in Bangladesh‘s team being knocked out by seven wickets. The top order completely fell apart, and after that, skipper Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim seized control of the situation. However, neither of them were able to take it to the next level, and the Bangla Tigers scored 193 runs in their first innings.
Because Pakistan was able to hunt it down with such easily, Bangladesh has a lot of problems that they need to solve before their match against Sri Lanka on September 9 in Colombo. Nic Pothas, when discussing their batting, noted that the batters did not make the appropriate judgements, which ultimately resulted in a loss of momentum towards the end of the game.
He went on to say that the administration of the squad is now working on finding the best possible combination of players, but that they still anticipate the cricket players to maintain their reliability in the next matches.
“From the batter’s perspective, today was all about making the right decisions.” “We probably didn’t make the right decisions at the right time for these conditions, but that’s always going to be a challenge with a team that is just starting through transition,” Nic Pothas said to the reporters after the game in Lahore. “We probably didn’t make the right decisions at the right time for these conditions.”
It’s not about looking too far forward; rather, it’s about maintaining some continuity. We are a team that is going through a period of change right now, and throughout this time we are working to determine the optimal composition for our group. Therefore, maintaining some degree of continuity for the time being, I believe that should be the goal,” he continued.
Nic Pothas discusses the aggressive batting technique that Bangladesh has taken.
Nic Pothas is of the opinion that the batters shouldn’t have played an aggressive brand of cricket in the first few overs because Pakistan have a pace attack of world-class calibre. On the other hand, he explained that it is an unavoidable consequence of modern cricket, in which batters frequently take chances in order to get going.
“When you win the toss and bat first, it goes without saying that you want to put a score on the board. However, you are also talking about an excellent bowling assault. I believe the decision that we chose against that seam attack in the heat caused us to make things a little bit simpler for the attackers to accomplish.
In an ideal situation, we would like to bat for a much longer period of time than that and post a score on the board. However, given the nature of the game while playing against top seam attacks, this is not always possible. Yes, we do need to make some progress in that particular area, but if it were that simple, everyone would be doing it, he remarked.