Bangladesh are going to prepare for the World cup properly now. The making of two new wickets of concrete in the BCB academy is reportedly at its final stage.
Concrete wickets usually help more for bouncy wickets as the ball comes quickly to the bat; it skids and bounces. It would be a better practice for Australia and New Zealand, where Bangladesh's next assignments are, rather than the previous, marble pitches.
But the time for preparation is short, hardly three weeks.
Eight months ago, when Jamie Siddons was appointed as the batting coach, he demanded a concrete wicket at once.
Roll back further, and you'll hear Shakib saying, "Batting in Mirpur for 10-15 innings will finish the careers of batters."
Apart from that, the pitch of Mirpur has been criticised many times over the last 5-6 years.
Interestingly, BCB did not respond to Jamie Siddons's demand, and the only response to Shakib's statement was to give him show cause notice.
Now BCB is doing the exact thing demanded from Shakib and Siddons. But at a time when people are even thinking of it as useless.
If BCB had responded accordingly to the critics earlier, Bangladesh could have been in a better position by now.
The sad part is that this is not the only evidence of a lack of planning for the T20 World Cup.
The team's captain and coach are both newly appointed. As a result, they are getting hardly a couple of months to prepare for the World Cup.
Now they have to set a team and get only six matches to experiment. It was supposed to be more if Bangladesh qualified for Super 4 of the Asia Cup.
Again, it is unclear what will happen to Shakib and Sriram, especially if they fail.
Also, if rumours are to be believed, BCB did not take Mushfiq's retirement well, as it hampered their planning. But you might wonder why even Mushfiq was in their planning in the first place.
He has been in poor form in T20s for a long time, and yet BCB didn't have a backup plan for him.
Whatever flashy words the BCB authorities throw at the media, most often subjected to get trolled mercilessly on social media, it is clear from their actions that they lack the proper vision to change the brand of cricket Bangladesh play in the shortest version of the game.
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