Jamie Siddons, Bangladesh batting coach, said on Thursday (October 27) that the batters need to be 'smarter' and play to their strengths after the side suffered a crushing 104-run loss to South Africa.
While chasing an imposing target of 206, Bangladesh made a good start, scoring 27 in the first two before they succumbed to Anrich Nortje's pace and hit the deck skills. Liton Das top-scored with a 34-ball 31 but none of the other batters crossed the 20-run mark.
"I think a little bit of what we did a lot is trying to clear the fence. We have not been six-hitters and we need to be a lot smarter. We hit the ball in the air too much," Siddons told reporters.
There was pace out there from one bowler (Nortje), the rest it looked like we were managing quite nicely when we were playing good cricket shots. Then we turned to slogging, that's not our game. We can't do that," he added.
Siddons also acknowledged that the batters have found it tricky to acclimatise to the pace-friendly conditions in Australia. However, it has to be observed that Bangladesh's batters don't have much experience of playing in Australian conditions, evidenced by the fact that the Asian nation hadn't played a single T20I game before this year's World Cup.
"It's totally different than what we practiced and play back at our home over there. We found Hobart really fast for our batsmen, they were getting hurried, by not such fast bowlers, and today we had guys bowling 145-150kph. That played a part, but the two shots [in the third] over they were just bad shots, nothing to do with pace."
Siddons also said that the think-tank has addressed the issue of not getting quick starts in the Power-Play reasonably well. Their next focus will on the middle phase of the innings, where they have largely struggled.
"Our first thing was to address our starts and we have addressed that quite well. Getting 40s and 50s in our starts and first six overs have been addressed. Now we are looking at seven to 15 where we are not doing well. We have been scoring 170s and 160s, it was hiccups in the last game and today it was disaster."
