Sports Desk

Bangladesh fielding coach Nick Pothas said on Friday that the Indian tour is a learning curve for them as he feels the difference between the two teams is huge, but added that they should not be assessed on the performance of the ongoing tour.

Tigers lost the two-match Test series against India while the hosts clinched the T20I series with one game in hand.

“You guys generally go good, bad, win, loss. We have a very different way of looking at things. We played against the best team in the world India. If we measure pure outcome, there are a lot of countries with bad tours in India. What we have to look at are the learning, we have to look at the future of what we have coming up with champions trophy, T20s and we have to look at the end of some of the legends that are finishing for Bangladesh. We look at the tour in a very different way. We always enter the game to win, we have to do that because that’s the nature of the sport in international level,” Pothas said ahead of the final T20I match at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Friday. “We are very fortunate to be touring India because we can get a lot of learning down. The learning has to be honest and what learning does when you play here is it drives you on,” he said.

“India lets you know where you have to be improve. So you have to be very eyes open when you come to India,” he said.

“So the learning is how to absorb pressure for long periods of time, how do you read the game better under pressure but most importantly how you prepare. That has to evolve that has to change all the time but as I said it is a privilege always to play against India,” he added.

“When it comes to performance, I think we have very short memories. We’ve just come from Pakistan where we have won a series in Pakistan which we have never done before,” he further stated.

“We’ve just came from New Zealand where we won games which has never happened before. We’re very good at knowing what happened yesterday and what’s happening now but we are not very good at acknowledging the path of the last 12 months. Over the past 12 months there have been huge improvements. So there’s no magic beans or bullet but what we can see that there is a huge amount of improvement. So let’s acknowledge that,” he said.

Pothas also that they have to create a role for Mehidy Hasan in the shortest format.

“Honest answer is that I’m the fielding coach so those questions probably not for me( whom Mehidy will replace Shakib or Mahmudullah). Very condition based and we’re very fortunate to have Miraz because he can bat at the top of the order and he can bat at the middle order and we have seen the progress he has made from a batting point of view,” Pothas said.

“So at the moment because he wasn’t at the T20 World Cup again we are going to be using him in different positions to actually find a role where he will play for the future,” he concluded.