They defeated Thailand and Malaysia with convincing ease, but against more formidable opposition, the Nigar Sultana-led team faltered, according to coach Nazmul Abedeen Fahim. This pattern might carry over into the forthcoming Women’s T20 World Cup.
Bangladesh advanced to the Women’s Asia Cup 2024 semifinals after losing to Sri Lanka and winning over Thailand and Malaysia.
In the semifinals, they faced India, a team captained by Harmanpreet Kaur that prevailed by ten wickets. With the circumstances of the match, Bangladesh was embarrassingly limited to just 80 runs. Expected to perform better in a high-stakes semifinal of a major tournament, the Tigresses fell short.
Nazmul Abedeen Fahim interestingly, anticipates that the criticism will persist because he does not anticipate the T20 World Cup to be any different.
He said that although the women’s squad has regressed and is now on par with the UAE and Thailand, they were once able to compete against teams like India and Pakistan. After losing in the semifinals, he was deeply dissatisfied and thinks the players won’t be able to take the criticism during the home World Cup.
“There is a good chance that the forthcoming World Cup will include even greater humiliations. If we performed poorly, it wouldn’t be shocking. The athletes won’t be able to handle the increased criticism, in my opinion. For them, I believe it would be even more challenging,” Fahim said to The Daily Star.
“We used to fight India hard, and we were comparable to Pakistan and Sri Lanka at those time. However, the later teams have advanced to a new level, and we are regressing and turning into the UAE and Thailand,” he continued.
Additionally, Fahim attacked the domestic cricket system, saying that no decent player can come out of it to play for the national team. In his view, the management failed to maintain continuity and there is no competition.
Because of how bad domestic cricket is, we are unable to consider recruiting players for the national team from that region. We feel at ease playing against Thailand and the UAE because our domestic cricket is marginally superior than theirs.
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“I believe that our cricket team lacks a culture of competition. We ought to have been in the position above Pakistan, but behind India, Sri Lanka. However, we were unable to keep the flow going. I believe that many people are unclear about the goals and purposes of cricket,” Fahim continued.
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