Bangladesh cricket is on celebration mode after winning three series in trot against minnows Zimbabwe, mighty Australia and New Zealand. All these commendable achievements added new feathers to the crown of Bangladesh. Team tigers have proved them as impregnable team at SBNCS, Dhaka But all attention of the cricket world is now focused on ensuing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021scheduled to start from October 2021. Experts and observers are questioning whether playing on slow low, gripping and turning wickets has prepared team Bangladesh ideally for the world cup to be much friendlier batting wickets. They are also questioning about Bangladesh team stuffed with little experienced new comers. 

BCB President Nazmul Hasan Papon himself after the New Zealand series while talking to the media regretted that Bangladesh team failed to implement the plan for the world Cup. If that is the observation of the BCB Chief after winning series against Mighty Australia 4-1 and strong New Zealand 3-2 observers can ask was there a plan for the World Cup? Or it was plan for trapping visitors on wicket not at all suitable for T20 matches? We think it was the latter, which has been successfully implemented. But this did not prepare Bangladesh team at all for the world cup where matches would be played on completely different wickets. The oppositions have all highly experienced top quality T20 specialist and Bangladesh squad have 35-49% new comers having little experience of playing against quality oppositions on true wickets.

Bangladesh played 5+5=10 matches and won 7 of them. Most of time the ball started turning even from the first over. Taking that advantage Bangladesh even bowled only spinners in the first 6 over power plays. Nowhere on any wicket this happens. It will definitely not happen like that in ICC World Cup though every team possesses top quality orthodox spinners including leg spinners. Even Bangladesh pacers Mustafiz and Saifuddin mostly bowled back of hand slow cutters. None except Mahmudullah batted consistently. Even Shakib and Mushfique could not play comfortably.  None of fresher produced anything extraordinary to justify their inclusions. These wickets neither prepared batsmen nor were ideal for bowlers. Soumya, Taskin, Shoriful and Shamim were given only one match. Of them Soumya and Shamim failed to impress. Taskin looked rusty, Only Shoriful looked good. Bangladesh lost the last match when the wicket looked marginally better. 

All above proved that BCB had no plan for preparing the team for the world cup and the team is not prepared for that. If grounds man could prepare reasonably sporting wicket for the last match why he prepared questionable wickets for all other matches . This clearly evidence that BCB plotted a plan for trapping the visitors for winning two series. But these did not prepare the team at all for the world cup and Bangladesh is going there with under prepared team with lot of rookies while all other teams would have seasoned professionals. 

Hence it is quite justified stating that BCB had no plan for ICC World Cup. 

BDST: 1120 HRS, SEP 12, 2021
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