Bangladesh head coach Steve Rhodes insisted that clinching their maiden multi-nation tournament in Ireland indicates the depth of their strength as they achieved the feat on the back players outside of their most experienced five. Bangladesh have shown tremendous growth in the ODI format for quite some time and that is considered largely due to the contribution of the five seniors - Mashrafe Mortaza, Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah, reports Cricbuzz.
However, their maiden multi-nation ODI championship in Ireland was earned by the cricketers of the future.
Soumya Sarkar, who remained consistent all through the tournament at the top, gave his team a perfect start with a timely half-century while Mosaddek Hossain completed the formalities with a scintillating fifty to help them beat West Indies by five wickets in the final and win a trophy after failing to do so in six previous occasions in the last 10 years.
Rhodes feels that winning the trophy despite the absence of Shakib, who was rested due to side-strain, and through the performances of the younger players prove that Bangladesh aren't a five-man army.
"This was quite an amazing chase today because it was tough and there have been two or three guys who have played special innings," said Rhodes. "What it does today, if you think of Mosaddek for example, he is a guy now who is going to keep everybody on his toes. That's the depth of the squad and he might not play and if he doesn't then what a great position we have. Some other good players playing, what it does give is, it gives us the confidence that we can win some big games as well," he said.
"That means Bangladesh are stronger within the squad and that's what we want as we want more depth and if we get that depth then people will stop talking about the big five," he said.
"We are not including the guy[Jayed] who has got five wickets and it is obviously hard for him and that means the guys who are in that squad are excellent players, " he said.
Rhodes added that Bangladesh need to show more patience with cricketers like Soumya Sarkar. "First of all with Soumya, he has been a revolution since he hit that hundred and double hundred in the DPL, but he also gets some rough days from people because he is a type of guy when he is inform he is really hot," said Rhodes.
Rhodes added that they have decided not to make a lot of changes in the batting order and keeping that in mind they did not want too many shuffles after learning that Shakib was out of the final.
"I think we have done some really good stuff but the batting has been really good," said Rhodes.