“We were practising to get acclimatised here but we haven’t been able to show our level of preparation”

Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo

Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza has questioned whether his side have adequately prepared for the World Cup after they lost both their warm-up matches, which were against Pakistan and Ireland.

Mortaza even went as far as calling his side “inconsistent” and feels that some players did not take the warm-up matches seriously.

“In terms of results, we are on zero,” Mortaza said. “We were practising to get acclimatised here but we haven’t been able to show our level of preparation. We couldn’t win despite playing well against Pakistan. We did very badly against Ireland. We are very inconsistent. I felt that though we trained very carefully and everyone got enough information about the sort of wicket they would face, but we haven’t executed properly.

“I can’t sit here and say that our morale isn’t shaken. To be honest, if we believe in our purpose, we can do good things. But who amongst us took these two practice matches seriously is my real concern. Even if they took it seriously, they couldn’t execute the plans. If we perform in this vein, it will definitely have an impact in the important matches up ahead. I think we will be better prepared mentally and physically in the main matches. We have five-six days ahead of us. We can’t change our skills during this short time but we have to be mentally and physically ready.”

While Mortaza is extremely disappointed that his side lost both their practice matches, he noted that the defeats may actually fire up some of the players up since they want to make their country proud.

“It would have been much better had we won any one of the practice matches,” he said. “It is not a good sign for our team, but I believe that we can turn around. I hope these defeats have hurt everyone in the team. It should. In which case, good results are a matter of time.

“I was personally quite happy that we had made 240-odd against Pakistan’s bowling attack. We have the ability, no doubt about it. But we haven’t been able to prepare mentally. If we can’t settle down mentally, we will suffer badly.”

Mortaza added that the main aim of the warm-up matches was to get the newcomers in the side accustomed to Australian conditions ahead of their first World Cup match, which will be against Afghanistan in Canberra on February 18.

“The specific view point was to see how everyone has progressed,” he said. “We have a lot of new players, so we had to see how they would cope in these conditions. Taskin [Ahmed] and Al-Amin [Hossain] took the new ball today because they may be required to bowl that early in some stage of the tournament. We shuffled the batting order too, to see how a batsman would react to different situations.

“Those who have regularly played in a certain position or role will continue to do so. Right combination is important to know which playing XI will take the field in a certain match. But we can’t say anything without seeing the wicket. We heard that it will be flat in Canberra. We are seeing different wickets in Brisbane and here in Sydney.”