Bangladesh pace bowling coach Talha Jubair said on Friday (August 28) that they are now confident of earning success abroad, as their pace unit has given them the belief that they can pick up 20 wickets.
Bangladesh returned home after their historic tour of Australia, where they managed to draw the two-match Test series 1-1.
The pace unit came up with a noteworthy performance Down Under in the opening Test that Australia lost by nine wickets to concede an early lead in the series. However, the series was levelled on the back of successive batting collapses by the tourists as they failed to cross 100 runs in either innings of the second Test.
“When your pace bowlers are performing well, that’s when you can realistically hope to win Test matches away from home. You need to take 20 wickets. This is definitely a good sign for us. I hope they can maintain their form,” Talha told reporters at the airport upon arrival from Australia.
“Look, this is a team game. There’s definitely a concern that if the batters had done a little better, we might have had an even better result in the second Test or played even more effectively. The toss in the second Test was very vital because the wicket had a lot of tennis-ball bounce. We couldn’t cope with that, that’s where we had some difficulty.
“Going to Australia and dominating them like that, where they couldn’t stand up against us in a single session, because you know how Australia counter-attacks. In the first Test, they simply couldn’t match us. In the second Test, we knew Australia would come back strongly. The toss ended up being a very decisive factor. Had the toss gone in our favour, the result could have been reversed.
“Beating Australia is a massive deal for us. It sends a message to world cricket that we can beat anyone. This experience will be enormously useful in our upcoming tours,” he added.
Talha said that he did not feel any difficulty guiding the fast bowlers of the national team as he has been quite close with them since their childhood days. He had replaced Shaun Tait in the national set-up after the latter decided to quit the post citing family reasons.
“I’ve been coaching fast bowlers for a long time. Working with bowlers wasn’t something entirely new for me. What was new was planning and strategising against the batsmen I was up against — Australia’s batsmen. Our analyst Shaon helped a great deal in identifying the weaknesses of Australia’s batsmen. Being able to target those weaknesses and execute against them was a huge thing. We bowled extensively at the weakness of each of their batsmen.
“We certainly had the hope and belief that we could beat Australia, and every one of us carried that belief going in. The preparation we did before the first Test was excellent. Everyone adjusted very well. We didn’t do particularly well in the practice match, and perhaps you were a little concerned about what would happen against Australia. But we believed that it was just a bad day. Overall, we felt that if we focus on our own game rather than worrying about the opponent, we can produce something good. You saw how we dominated and won the first Test that was very pleasing, Alhamdulillah,” he concluded.
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