Better fielding, better result

“I have very high expectations. We have to be the best fielding side in Asia. We can’t compare with others, but we know where we need to get to.”

These were Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusinghe’s words ahead of their three-match Twenty20 International series against England.

And in the first match, the Tigers produced a great fielding effort throughout, which eventually played a pivotal role in setting up their maiden victory over the Three Lions in the format.

It was not that Bangladesh did not produce blunders in the field, they did. Their skipper Shakib Al Hasan, considered one of the country’s most reliable fielders, dropped a dolly when his counterpart Jos Buttler skied one. Nasum Ahmed, of whose bowling that catch was dropped, had dropped Phil Salt earlier that over.

However, Bangladesh’s ground fielding was brilliant, with several young players on the pitch, saving runs with quick ground covering and downgrading doubles to singles.

The Bangladesh fielding effort was not perfect, and it was epitomised in the final ball of the England innings when Moeen Ali tried to hoick it over the cow corner.

Najmul Hossain Shanto, the eventual player of the match for his brilliant 51 runs off 30 balls alongside three catches, took the catch but realised he was going over the boundary, thus releasing the ball just before he crossed over, and Rony Talukdar, who came in from the deep mid-wicket boundary, dived in to take the catch but the ball just slipped through his fingers.

It ended up saving four runs, and while it was not the magnificent catch it almost was, it signified the shift in terms of fielding for Bangladesh.

In contrast to the One-Day Internationals series, the fielding improved several folds. While the Tigers’ fielding effort was not half bad in the ODIs, there was a clear lack of energy on the ground, which did not look like the case in the first T20I.

Hathurusinghe claimed after the ODIs that they had out-fielded England in the 50-over matches, which was questionable. Nonetheless, the Tigers definitely did so in the first T20I, and Najmul iterated after the match that the whole team was focused on fielding.

“Our whole team is focused on fielding. You will see that players change their positions themselves depending on which positions are important. Even Taskin (Ahmed), Mustafizur (Rahman), and Hasan (Mahmud) have improved. They put in a lot of effort in the field. We spend extra time on fielding practice. We are trying to become a good fielding side. We still have a lot to improve,” he said after the match.

“We definitely have room for improvement in fielding. I challenged them in fielding. They showed me some good signs,” Hathurusinghe had said ahead of the match, something that came to fruition later.

A big concern for Bangladesh ahead of the 2023 ODI World Cup is their fielding as several players in the team have lost their touch due to age catching up to them.

“The standard of our fielding is not good because whatever matches he (Hathurusinghe) has seen he felt that our fielding is not up to the mark. He said he can hide one or two cricketers, but where can he hide five to six fielders? This is a big problem and he said we are going to play the World Cup and that it (poor fielding standards) cannot go on,” BCB President Nazmul Hassan had said in an interview after the appointment of the Sri Lankan head coach.

The win over England, where fielding played a pivotal part, might have shown Bangladesh the way. Whether they take it to the other formats remains the question.