Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha was unfazed by the form of Liton Das who of late has been going through a bad patch.
Liton, unarguably the best batter of the country, given his last three year’s form, had a poor outing in Global T20 tournament in Canada and Lankan Premier League (LPL).
He scored 152 runs in nine innings with just a fifty under his belt in Canada before making just 34 runs in three innings in LPL. As he would have to take full responsibility to give Bangladesh a good start in absence of Tamim Iqbal, his form raised a question ahead of the Asia Cup.
But Hathurusingha was reluctant to judge Liton's form by T20 matches as the Asia Cup will be an ODI-format tournament.
"I have no concern about his form at the moment because he has played in a few competitions in Canada and in Sri Lanka. Those are T20s," Hathurusingha said on Saturday.
"But he's training really hard. If you look at those recent tournaments that he played, the pitches are not that great, not high scoring, especially in Canada. And to a certain extent in Sri Lanka. So, whatever the runs he scored were impact runs. Yes, we want him to play different, like a big role during the Asia Cup and the World Cup. So, hope that he will show," he added.
The main thing which kept Bangladesh fans concerned is that Liton on most occasions failed to prolong his innings despite getting a good start.
Bangladesh head coach however expected Liton to hit form in time when it would matter most.
"He thinks that he could have done much better. So, we also think that he's capable of doing more than what he's showing us. So, definitely, he will show us the form that he had for last like two years ago when he was the highest run scorer. We are expecting that kind of performance from him," Hathurusingha said, showing his confidence toward Liton.
Rather than Liton's form, Hathurusingha looked most concerned about the absence of fast bowler Ebadot Hossain, who was ruled out due to injury.
Terming Ebadot as the impact bowler, he said: "Ebadot is one of our impact bowlers, the fastest bowler out of the five fast bowlers we played in the last few series. So, it's a big loss, and to replace him straight away it's a hard task. Hopefully, he'll recover soon."
Hathurusingha, a former Sri Lanka batter, also spoke about Bangladesh's training, which was mostly a closed door session this time around.
"I'm very, very happy. We had a really good lead-up with the fitness and the medical at the start. And then in the middle individual skill development was there for about seven days," he informed.
"And then after that, the next seven days were more tactical and role-based training. And then the last five days were more for individual players, what they wanted to do. We ended up with a practice game, which was, the first time, I have done practice games with many teams and very hard to keep the intensity from the players. But the last game was one of the rare ones that they actually competed till the last ball until I asked them to come off, and we finished at around 10:30. So, I'm very happy about that."
The head coach emphasized on bowlers' contribution in batting, saying that the tail-enders runs' sometimes gives the impetus the team needs in the modern cricket.
"The bowlers trained on their batting a lot in probably the last two months, three months with our skill coaches," he said.
"Taskin as you name improved a lot (as a batter). And then he has given us evidence as well against England he closed the game out. At the same time, if you remember, Shoriful showed what he can do against Ireland and the Afghanistan game, and got us over the line. Other batsmen also work hard. To name a few Hasan Mahmud has come a long way and Fizz (Mustafizur), in his own way, is hitting big, big, big shots."
