Bangladesh head coach Phil Simmons announced on Monday that the team will shift from a spin-heavy attack to a three-pace strategy in ODIs as they prepare for next year’s World Cup in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.
“Yeah, it’s definitely the plan that we are going to try from now on to play three quicks because, as you say, the World Cup is in South Africa, and that’s the type of cricket we’ll be playing when we get down there,” Simmons said at a press conference at Mirpur’s Sher-e Bangla National Cricket Stadium ahead of the Pakistan series practice session.
“There will be occasions where we might play three spinners, but it’s never going to go back to one spinner and two pacers. You have to prepare for where you’re going, and three quicks is something we’ll be looking at most of the time,” he added.
Simmons also highlighted that Bangladesh will play on much more sporting wickets compared to the controversial surface used during last year’s West Indies series in October.
“We started well and finished well against West Indies, and we don’t want to go backwards from there. The wickets look a lot better than they did for that series. The main goal is to make progress, to bat the way we batted in the last game, but also to fix a few areas where we can still improve in the middle overs. In bowling, we need to take more wickets in the middle overs. These are the two areas we’ll focus on a lot,” he said.
“The wickets look better now. I watched the last part of the BPL, even the game played two days ago, and it still looks much better now. That’s what we want as cricketers to play on good wickets so that we can test our skills. I think the wickets look a lot better now. We’ll see what happens,” he added.
