Asia Cup: 1st Real Challenge for Whatmore and Co.
lets go back and see all the series we had since whatmore took over, in the perspective of what our teams gaol and our expectation was:
Australia tour: the very first tour since whatmore. Not only he did not have enough time to prepare, but also the opponent were to tough to handle. still we managed to get some practice match win and spent a very good unbeaten day that earned back much of bd's lost respect. But there was no expectation of winning any test or odi. so no question of real competition either.
Pakistan Tour: still on the stage of "indivisual improvement", and not enough time to build a really good team. team did good, but no win their either. one could be win was beyond expectations of players. who knows, probably that was the reason we could not get the last wicket. again, the target was not compitition, but improvement.
home tour england: first home series since whatmore. could not do as good as expected. but still not long enough time given. hard to say what the team's expectation was.
Zim tour: a reasonable time had be ellesped under whatmore. an odi win covered up the poor test performances. but that was still not a true measure of our strength as zim ranks just above us.
WI tour: the team is in a period of deprasion, also was tired from a long series against england. because the odi matches was short, we don't really know how they would do if they were full length matches. exceptional performance in first test but disaster in the second. is that all fast pitch? still, since we did not have experience in playing WI pitches and fast bowlers, we could not compete in full strength.
the point i'm trying to make is, we had some sort of problems in all the tour we had, one way or another. from oppoent too strong to not enough strong. from lack of time to unknown pitch and so on. BUT, we have no excuse now.
* we did spend over an year with whatmore.
* we know srilankan condition.
* we know the teams we are playing against.
* we had good practice sessions.
* we are going there two weeks ahead of time to play the maximum 3 practice matches and also to know the environment.
* we have a weak team to play.
* we have two team to play against (if we go to second round) who are not impossible to beat.
really we have no excuse. its time for tigers to come with some good show. not only smash HK nice and cool they need to do more than that.
it does not matter what the result against the 3 test playing nation will be. but, they their has to be this: second round matches against bangladesh sould look like any other match there (i.e ind v pak or pak v srilanka).
tigers, u have a big test ahead of u.
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