Bangladesh star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan said that the national side’s 2024 T20 World Cup preparations are not ideal since they are not testing themselves against top teams. Shakib highlighted the importance of playing against top-flight teams as the process of building up for a major tournament like the World Cup, drawing reference to their series against New Zealand and Pakistan ahead of the last edition of the tournament. Bangladesh are currently facing off against Zimbabwe in a five-match T20I series at home, following which they head to the USA for a three-match series against the joint World Cup hosts themselves.
Shakib has argued that Bangladesh’s results in the 2022 T20 World Cup were decent – not too good and not too bad. Shakib felt that Bangladesh should judge themselves based on that performance.
“In the last World Cup we performed reasonably and though we didn’t do extremely well no one will say we did bad. If that is our benchmark then we have a chance of crossing it in this World Cup and if we want to do that we have to win three matches in the first round,” Shakib told reporters in Dhaka on May 5.
“In Australia (T20 World Cup in 2022) we went after playing against New Zealand and Pakistan and so certainly we went to the World Cup on the back of very good preparation and taking that into consideration this is not ideal. But this is the best we can as far as preparation is concerned,” Shakib added.
Shakib went on to explain the true motive behind Bangladesh scheduling a series against USA just before the World Cup.
“A big reason behind playing against USA is to get adapted to their conditions and to know about the place because there are not too many players who played in USA. Very few have the experience of playing there in Florida (2018) and we will get accustomed with the conditions by playing this series but at the same time I would say this is not ideal (preparation-wise),” Shakib added
Bangladesh are yet to announce their squad for the T20 World Cup, and will have until May 25 to send in their list of players.
