Ahead of the home series against Australia, the Bangladesh women’s team was brimming with confidence. The home team was motivated to give the visitors a serious competition after their recent victory against India. But in truth, the visitors thoroughly defeated them in both the ODIs and the T20Is, bringing them back to earth.
The inability to play any matches against Australia served as a warning to the national squad, who will host the upcoming T20 World Cup. Hashan Tillakaratne, the head coach of Bangladesh, acknowledged his worries on his team’s lack of effort.
“Well, it’s been disappointing,” Tillakaratne said to reporters after their T20I series finale on Thursday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium. Since we are playing the best team in the world, I don’t mind losing as long as we played well. It’s frustrating how we challenged them or how we played against them,” he remarked.
“I felt that the batsmen had a fair series against the South Africans. When you play against a top team, you learn how to use your prior gaming knowledge, and the opposition pushes you to improve. There are no justifications, but even if it was our first time playing Australia in a bilateral series, I don’t think our level of effort was justified.”
Tillakaratne noted that fear of failing was a major factor as well and that they needed to start over in order to figure out where they went wrong.
None of us has played particularly well against Australia, so we need to go back to the drawing board, figure out where we went wrong, and come back stronger. Apart from a few performances, everyone was a complete failure.
The fact that this is the first time playing a bilateral series versus Australia has created a fear component and a fear of failing. We didn’t do well against Australia because they were hesitant to express themselves and were a little afraid, which is why I didn’t see this when we faced South Africa, Pakistan, and India,” he said.
“We want to speak with the girls first, do an open debriefing to figure out what went wrong, and then decide how to proceed. We have to realise that we put a lot of money on these females, and I’m confident that they will eventually turn things around, so there’s no purpose in cutting and altering,” he remarked.
“Of course playing against them is a big positive and we know how they raise the bar and if we have to challenge or compete against top sides what are the areas we need to improve,” he stated.
“Even though we are really depressed and sad, as a member of the coaching team, I would advise the girls need to develop tremendously because it’s not simple. However, we must return,” he said, gesturing with his fingers to the forthcoming home series against India, the T20 Asia Cup, and the T20 World Cup.
Australian captain Alyssa Healy seems content as her team won the entire series in both the ODIs and T20Is, while Bangladesh received a harsh reality check. Prior to the T20 World Cup, which is scheduled to take place in Bangladesh in September and October of this year, the foreign players appeared to have checked all the boxes in terms of creating momentum and offering opportunities.
Yes, I believe that, looking at it from Australia’s point of view, we had all we could have wanted from this trip. Opportunities were presented when they were needed, and the outcomes worked in our favour,” Healy told reporters after their triumphant tour.
“We gained as much as we could from this series in terms of the big picture and what we are aiming for. Positives outweighed problems, and the group’s camaraderie was even more significant. Thus, perhaps, the next twelve months will be fascinating for this group “added the speaker.