Tigers ready in Hathurusinghe’s second reign

The last time Bangladesh yielded a home One-Day International series was in 2016. Chandika Hathurusinghe was the head coach. England were the foe.

Almost seven years from that, England are back. And so is Hathurusinghe in his old role, after a six-year hiatus.

Now, Bangladesh are ready to take on the champions of the world, to put the English on the list of defeated rivals in a series for the
first time.

The Tigers’ record against England is eclectic. On one hand, there are huge wins in two World Cups - 2011 & 2015. But then again, there are several crushing defeats, with the latest coming in the last ODI World Cup.

However, England might be a tad grateful to the Tigers, especially for the defeat in Adelaide in 2015. That was the one which knocked them out of that World Cup and kickstarted their new era, in which they played an unforeseen brand of cricket, bludgeoning the opposition with boundaries and feeding the opponent much, much more than they can chew.

That is what posits England as a difficult opponent despite Bangladesh’s fantastic home record, which is built on pitches that are two-paced in nature, suiting their bowlers.

However, that might not be as effective as it has been in the past and the Tigers might need to reciprocate the aggressive mentality that the English have implemented.

Hathurusinghe apparently is trying to do that, as seen in the practice match between the players earlier this month, where the batters tried to score rather than save their wickets, almost a similar model to England’s.

The Sri Lankan though is not willing to stop there as he is looking to be aggressive in every way possible.

“We played aggressive cricket in my last stint. You see only the action of batters. There are many ways of playing aggressive cricket apart from hitting the ball out of the ground. It is the attitude that we are bringing, whether fielding, bowling or batting, we will be aggressive,” Hathurusinghe said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Although he talked about that, the Tigers’ boss is not much interested in tweaking things too much as the existing formula has been working, with seven wins in the bag for Bangladesh in their last 10 ODIs.

“They have been playing good cricket lately, so my job is to see what they are doing. Their process has been successful. If it is working well, I don’t need to say something. I will probably observe in the first two games, then take it from there,” he said.

While it might be a motivation for Bangladesh to charge themselves up to beat the only unbeaten foe at home since 2015, the Bangladesh head coach is unwilling to make it their sole purpose, although he believed that even beating a depleted England side that has a Test team playing in New Zealand will boost their confidence.

“If we have to lift ourselves for (England), that’s not the right motivation. We are playing for the national team, we always want to do well. They are the world champions. They have one team playing somewhere else, they have another team here. They have a mind-blowing depth of talent. We want to see where we are at and find out the gap that we have to bridge. If we do well in these conditions, it will give us confidence,” he said.

While Bangladesh are coming off seven wins in their last 10 games, the situation is exactly the opposite for the visitors as they have lost seven out of the last 10 matches they completed.

Despite that gulf in form, Moeen Ali was unwilling to call the Tigers favourites for the series, especially because of the ‘World Champions’ tag they carry.

“It doesn’t really matter who are the favourites. I think Bangladesh in their own conditions are very good. And we know that we have lost eight in the last 10 but we are also the champions of the world and have done well. Before that actually, we haven’t really had our best team for a lot of the time recently,” he said.

The English all-rounder was also confident of persisting with their all-out approach in Mirpur, despite the pitch often playing tricks on the batters.

“We’ve done it all around the world (our approach in ODIs). It’s a different challenge and probably a different sort of plan, but the mindset is always the same. And, if somebody bowls badly on any sort of surface, you try and put them away. We’re confident, we got the players to play well here,” Moeen said.