Tigers wary of street-smart New Zealand

The Tigers must not become complacent in their five-match twenty20 international series against New Zealand after their successful hunt against the Australians because the Blackcaps will be better prepared, believes Bangladesh batting consultant Ashwell Prince.

Prince, the former South African batsman, on his first assignment after getting the long-term role of Bangladesh’s batting consultant after a short stint in the Zimbabwe tour; thinks that despite New Zealand missing some key players and experienced backroom staff, beating them will not be a cakewalk.

“I think we can expect NZ to analyse and plan well, using the recent Australia series to learn from. They are a street-smart team who would plan meticulously against every batsman, bowler and pitch. They will use every bit of information to help them,’’ he said in a video message.

The new batting consultant of the Tigers is expecting the same sort of surface where Australia stumbled, “I am expecting similar conditions against New Zealand. The batsmen from the Australia series had a nice discussion yesterday, sharing with guys like Liton Das and Mushfiqur (Rahim) who didn’t play in that series. These are experienced guys, but they shared what worked and what we like to improve on from the Australia series, taking it into the New Zealand series coming up.”

In Zimbabwe, the Bangladesh batsmen were scoring runs consistently across formats but against Australia, the flow dried up. Prince believes that happened due to the change in conditions.

“I think one of the biggest differences between Zimbabwe and Australia series, is the difference in batting conditions. Adaptability is a very important aspect of batting. I think the team adjusted well to the bouncy conditions in Zimbabwe. Then coming home to Bangladesh conditions. It had a lot lower bounce and scoring rate,” he said.

The batsmen of both Bangladesh and Australia had nightmares throughout the series, and therefore Prince is not much concerned about the sorry figures of the opening pair.

“Personally, I am not really concerned about the opening batsmen. I think we had one or two good partnerships in Zimbabwe, but conditions were tough against Australia. Adapting to the conditions is important. The partnership would be important. I think we have a strong competition in the opening position,” he said.