All the available players are now at the team hotel. Following last night's evening session under lights and the day time practice today at the SNBS Academy ground, I can confirm that Dhaka has some extremely big hitters of a cricket ball!
The most impressive batsmen - and the two who have really caught my eye - have been Imran Nazir and Anamul Bijoy.
Imran Nazir had a great first batting session with the Gladiators
Imran looks like a genuinely hard hitter of a ball and is unafraid to hit long and straight from the start. He smashed some huge 6s on the main square into the seats at Mirpur as well as pulled the ball with tremendous power. In a similar way, Anamul is a superb talent. I haven't really seen this lad bat before and now on two occasions he has mightily impressed me. I predict big things for him if he continues to play with freedom and no fear of failure.Â
What is clear is that selecting the final eleven is going to be tough. But by far the hardest job will be choosing a batting order since the top 6 or 7 could almost be reversed around and not much difference would be seen. The strength of the Dhaka team is in the power hitting line-up, very smart seam bowlers and excellent, controlled spin. Our fielding coach, Julien Fountain is developing both the throwing of the team and the ground fielding, so I know the guys are in great hands.
Mohammad Rafique joined us today as bowling coach and spent two hours bowling superb left arm spin at our batsmen to give them some excellent, testing practice.
The day of the opening ceremony is going to be our first full session with all our squad available except Mashrafe who is playing the last match of the DPL.Â
We are just awaiting the arrival of Kieron Pollard who is due with us very soon to complete the 18 players available. He has been playing T20 in the Caribbean and first-class cricket for Trinidad. Once he gets here our line-up will be complete and we are very much looking forward to the big clash with Khulna on Saturday.