Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha has stated that he will rotate players as much as possible in order to identify the optimum combination for the team at the ICC Cricket World Cup in India.
The Tigers will play a three-match ODI series against Afghanistan, Asia Cup, and then a three-match ODI series against New Zealand at home before the World Cup, which will be contested from October 5 to November 19.
“We are trying to give some players game time. That doesn’t mean they know and we know the supporting role, what we want to do, what areas we need to look forward to the players,” Hathurusingha said in Chattogram today after Bangladesh’s practice session.
“That means sometimes we won’t have depth in case of an emergency close to the Asia Cup and World Cup. So keeping the reason in mind we want to give players a chance,” he said.
He went on saying: “I don’t think we have played a lot of cricket leading up to now. So, we have this series and the Asia Cup then a couple of practice games before the World Cup as well. So, we have a lot of crickets coming up. This is really an ideal preparation for us leading up to the Asia Cup and for the World Cup.”
The Afghanistan series is slated to begin on Wednesday, with Bangladesh hoping to dominate despite knowing that the visitors would be a very different team than the one that played a one-off Test here last month and lost by a record 546-run margin.
“We love to do that. But it’s a different format and different team as well. We will be very pleased to go with the Test match win, but this is totally a different game,” the Sri Lanka born coach said.
In the ICC World Cup Super League, Afghanistan won 11 games out of 15 and so it is believed that they would pose a different challenge in this format. Bangladesh however have the upper-hand over the Afghans in ODI format too, winning seven out of 11 encounters between the two sides.
“They have been playing good cricket lately. They have a very good bowling unit. Their top four batters have established in the last couple of years as well. They are a pretty formidable team in the one-day format,” Hathurusingha said.
