After a disastrous tour to New Zealand, Bangladesh national cricket team returned home on Sunday morning.
Tigers faced the hosts in the three-match ODI and three-match T20 series but failed to end the winless drought in New Zealand.
The Tigers’ next assignment is to play a two-match Test series against Sri Lanka, which is a part of the World Test Championship. The Bangladesh team is scheduled to travel to Sri Lanka on April 12.
Bangladesh failed to play a good brand of cricket in every department against New Zealand. They lost the ODI series 3-0 before enduring the same result in the T20I series.
The Tamim Iqbal-led ODI team fought in the second match scoring 271 runs while batting first. Tamim and Mohammad Mithun hit a fifty each in that game, but the hosts chased it down with 10 balls to play. Bangladesh disappointed to show any resistance in the other matches.
It was expected that the pace-bowlers would shine in the fast and bouncy surface of New Zealand. But the Bangladeshi pacers failed to do that. Taskin Ahmed bowled some good spells during this series but failed to reach the expectation. The country’s premium pacer Mustafizur Rahman was also below-par during this tour.
Many eyes were on Hasan Mahmud and Shoriful Islam— the two new weapons in Bangladesh’s pace-bowling armoury. Hasan’s New Zealand tour ended with only one ODI as he suffered an injury while Shoriful showed some glimpses of his potential bagging two wickets in three T20Is.
Shoriful got some bounce and movement in New Zealand wicket and he managed to trouble the hosts’ batsmen in all three matches of the T20I series.
In terms of batting, the New Zealand tour was one of such tours that Bangladesh would love to forget. In the ODI series, Bangladesh failed to pass the 200-run mark twice, and in T20Is, they were more ineffective against the bowling attack of the hosts.
Mushfiqur Rahim played only the ODI series and failed to come up even with a fifty. He missed the entire T20I series due to an injury while Mahmudullah Riyad hit a 76 in the last ODI, but that wasn’t enough of what was expected from the experienced campaigner. At the top of the order, Liton Das, Soumya Sarkar were also out of luck in this tour.
Nasum Ahmed and Mahedi Hasan demonstrated some decent spells of spin-bowling. Mahedi bagged a few wickets as well, but like the other departments, Bangladeshi spinners were also failed to do something memorable in New Zealand.
The Bangladesh team members were supposed to play at least one round of First-class cricket in the National Cricket League (NCL) ahead of the Sri Lanka tour.
But due to the recent surge of Covid-19 aross the country, the NCL is halted temporarily by the BCB. So the Tigers will have to travel to Sri Lanka without playing any longer version cricket for a long time. However, they might have a three-day practice game in Sri Lanka before the main series takes place.
