Photo: Firoz Ahmed
Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha acknowledged the arduous challenge of facing the Afghanistan bowling attack but pointed out that the familiarity of facing the Afghans in recent encounters will help the Tigers’ cause.
Bangladesh take on Afghanistan in Lahore on Sunday in their second and final group-stage fixture of the Asia Cup in a must-win contest in order to stay in contention for qualification to the second round.
The Tigers got their Asia Cup campaign off to a dismal start as they succumbed to a five-wicket loss against Sri Lanka on Thursday.
“This game is very important because of what happened in the last game against Sri Lanka. We know that it’s a must-win game. We certainly didn’t play to our potential in the last game and we didn’t represent ourselves well enough but we are confident that we will bring our A-game against Afghanistan tomorrow,” Hathurusingha told the reporters on Saturday.
Hathurusingha deemed the Afghanistan bowling attack as one of the best in the world as he singled out two of the spinners, expectedly Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman, as being world-class.
“The Afghanistan bowling attack is one of the best in the world. It’s definitely a challenge but we have played them recently and our players had some success. So it all depends on how you perform on the day. We are very much aware of the challenges that we have to face.
“As I said before, they have one of the best bowling attacks in world cricket, especially in limited-over cricket. They got two world-class spinners and decent seamers. We are well aware of their threat because we played them recently in T20Is and ODIs,” he said.
