Absolutely agreed with that...
May be its just me but nowadays in ODIs, at home, I expect:
- We can win 3-5 out of 10 games against England
- We can win 5-7 out of 10 games against a full-strength WI (the WC performance notwithstanding!)
- We can win 4-6 out of 10 games against NZ
That is simply a massive improvement from around 4 years back when we were capable of the occasional upsets against teams ranked higher than us but the only one we could be counted on to beat consistently was Zimbabwe. We had one or two bats who averaged in the 30s (courtesy of Zimbabwe and other lower ranked teams) and the rest in the low 20s!
One of the other positives in the last 4 years for me has been the policy to generally persist with the same 'core' which a) means that players have been allowed to build on their early 'promise' without constantly looking over their shoulder b) gain experience and self-belief (consistently beating higher ranked opponents in close games is a tangible) and c) signaled to aspiring players that they really need to up their game and maintain it over a period of time to wear the national colours. Today as we look around for new faces we have a number of players to select from who have consistently accomplished over a number of seasons which simply wasn't the case 4 years ago.
Four years from now we will be going
to Australia & New Zealand for the next world cup. I hope by then much of current core would be around (by virtue of their performance of course!) and therefore one of the more exprienced teams with a real shot at the title!
I am clearly in the minority here but I still believe that the current coaching staff - including Jamie Siddons - has shown enough results to be offered a one year contract to make their case that all the work that has gone into this team is about to pay off on a more consistent basis going forward.
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Originally Posted by ZunaidH
Coach;
I personally did not see anything ugly from Bangladesh in this world cup. I may have seen a few bad things but nothing ugly. The 3 quarter final matches I saw in the forms of WI vs PAK, NZ vs SA and SRI vs ENG are nothing worse or better than the BAN vs SAF or BAN vs WI. This is cricket and more importantly professional sports. Even if it is two games in the same world cup. I strongly believe that Bangladesh is the fastest growing "Test" country in the world and the coaching staff we have are competent, passionate and achievers. I have very sound logic to back that up as well. So cheers, and stop with this stupid witch hunt, already.
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