Bangladesh head coach Phil Simmons believes the innings and 85-run defeat to Zimbabwe in Harare on Tuesday, will not dent the confidence his side built from their recent Test successes.
Bangladesh suffered their first innings defeat against Zimbabwe in 25 years after being outplayed in the one-off Test, which ended within two and a half days. After being bowled out for 140 in the first innings, Bangladesh watched Zimbabwe pile up 410 to take a commanding 270-run lead before collapsing again for 185.
The Tigers arrived in Harare on the back of a home series sweep over Pakistan in May, prompting questions over whether the heavy defeat could undermine their confidence.
Simmons insisted one poor performance would not erase the belief generated by recent results.
He said, “There’s still a lot of confidence even though we’ve lost the match. We won something like five Test matches straight, so there’s a lot of confidence there,” Simmons said after the match.
Simmons further stressed that a single defeat does not change the progress the team has made, despite their failure to execute their plans in Harare.
“We’ve been batting really well, so one Test match doesn’t change how much confidence we have. We take the fact that we lost the Test match because we didn’t do the right things and we move on from there. We learn something from losing,” he said.
Bangladesh’s defeat inside three days made the result particularly difficult to accept, but Simmons urged his players to learn from their mistakes and look ahead.
“It is, but it’s just our mistakes. They played well, but we didn’t play as well as we can do. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we have to swallow it and make sure we move on from that,” he added.
