Wellington: Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana on Thursday acknowledged that her side have to fix their batting concerns ahead of their final league match against Australia in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. In their first-ever ODI World Cup appearance, Bangladesh looked strong with the ball but it has been the batting which has been their Achilles heel.
“Our bowling unit is doing very well, so what we will do and what we need to work the most on is to fix our batting unit, it has become very important. It turns out that our bowlers tried to restrict the opponents to a decent score in all the last matches we played but somehow we couldn’t support them with our batting unit because the top order collapsed,” said Sultana in the pre-match virtual press conference.
Sultana disclosed that discussions around improved batting show have been happening amongst the players. “So, those scores were not achievable, or at least we could have gone even closer to those matches. Now we have discussed among ourselves how we can play or plan so that our batting unit can come back on track.”
“Now every one of us expects the batting to bounce back. Of course, Australia are the strongest team and so far they are in a very good position in the tournament. But still, I think that if we can do well in both units – we can fight them very well.”
Sultana admitted that Bangladesh haven’t been able to find time to adjust to windy conditions at Wellington due to rain. “The weather here is windy, and we came here yesterday. Yesterday we were able to go to the field in the afternoon but we couldn’t do much because it was raining outside. So far, our analysts are trying to give us as much information as they can. There was a match today and I still don’t know the result.”
“Seeing that, as much knowledge as we can get now from there and after going to the field tomorrow, maybe we’ll be able to understand more. We’ll try to do a little knocking on the wicket or bat and then we can understand a bit of the behaviour of the wicket and we can adjust to the conditions.”
Sultana signed off by saying that her team wants to take inspiration from the men’s team registering their first-ever series win over South Africa by 2-1 in Centurion.
“The Bangladesh team has done a great job. I congratulate them and there is always good wishes from our team. There are many in our team who regularly follow the game of the Bangladesh team. We watch regularly because we love cricket so much. So, a good result and we could get a positive vibe from there. We want to carry forward with those positive vibes.”
–IANS