We can't afford to score 240, 250 in the World Cup: Siddons
"We can't afford to make 240, 250 in the World Cup. We need to make 300s and 300 plus. So, it's a good time we batted really well."
Bangladesh's batting coach Jamie Siddons has said that scoring 240-250 will not be enough in the upcoming World Cup in India. Siddon has pointed out the reality that teams will need to score 300 or more than that to win matches there. He also said that the batters were more confident playing Ireland bowlers but it was a challenge as well.
"I think we've been building to that for a while now. And of course, we play Ireland, so we were a lot more confident to go aggressively against them. We've got to learn to score big and that was our challenge against Ireland to make sure we got runs quickly, especially in the one-day games," Siddons said after the end of the second day's play when he was asked what has been changed in the Tigers' batting approach.
"We can't afford to make 240, 250 in the World Cup. We need to make 300s and 300 plus. So, it's a good time we batted really well."
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Siddons reminded that the batters have got to play with similar intent against the better sides in T20Is.
"And in T20Is, we've got to do that against the better teams as well. So it was a good challenge for us and a couple of new players who came in. They were really aggressive and had a really good series. So, really happy to see that talents coming through," he added.
Siddons was quite happy with the way Bangladesh batters batted on Wednesday, especially Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, and Litton Das.
Bangladesh ultimately scored 369 for the loss of all wickets in reply to Ireland's 214 in the first innings. Their innings run rate of 4.58 is now the highest for them in a Test innings (minimum 300 runs). They dominated the first two sessions of the day accumulating 136 and 146 runs respectively.
Shakib played an 87-run innings in just 94 balls. Litton bagged 43 runs and played at a strike rate of more than 100. Mushfiq was probably the slowest of them all, racking up his 10th Test hundred, but he bagged his second-fastest hundred in Test cricket and scored at a strike rate of 75.
"(The batting) Pretty aggressive I thought. We were served up a few bad balls, so it was good that the boys were ready and willing to put them away. So, the scoring rate went quick, which took the game forward really fast. Happy with the way we batted," Siddons said.
