The Bangladesh national cricket team returned to their usual business as the conditioning camp for the one-off Test series against Afghanistan and subsequent tri-nation series involving Zimbabwe and Afghanistan began at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium on Monday.
Apart from Shakib al Hasan who is on vacation in The United States of America (USA and Sabbir Rahman who had recently tied the knot, all of the other players of 35-member squad were present on the opening day at the home of cricket.
This is the first time, cricketers got busy since the recent tour of Sri Lanka where they whitewashed in three-match ODI series following the disappointing outing in the World Cup.
“We are doing the fitness test after eight months. Because we have been playing non-stop cricket since October,” Tigers conditioning coach Mario Villavarayan said here on Monday after the opening day’s session.
“It is important for me and for the players to find out where they are and how we need to push them in the next coming months.”
“And it’s understandable because we have not done fitness camp for eight months. So it’s natural, they are not at their best but not bad. So I am happy in that sense,” he said.
“We did the fitness test to find the condition (of the players) in terms of their running fitness, where they are in terms of their strength and others to work on the areas where we need to work on. There are some guys who need to work on their fitness and there are some who are doing well, but they need to improve too,” he said.
“I’m not going to say how many or mention the names but all of them need to keep improving. Even the guys, who did well, need to improve,” he said adding that he did not believe four or five-day’s fitness camp.
“Personally I do not think it’s enough. I think I need at least four to six weeks but this is international cricket. We cannot get that kind of time. So, we will use our skill camp to do fitness sessions as well to keep improving,” he said.
In the opening day Jahurul Islam, Farhad Reza, Abu Jayed Rahi and Mushfiqur Rahim were standout performer in the fitness test.
Mario Villavarayan said that both Mahmudullah and Saifuddin, who sustained injury earlier recovered sufficiently to attend the fitness test.
Mahmudullah had shoulder injury while Saifuddin missed the tour of Sri Lanka due to back pain.
“Mahmudullah and Saifuddin completed what we needed them to do. That’s quite satisfactory, but we need to keep pushing,” said Villavarayan.
The inclusion of Mashrafe Bin Mortaza in the fitness camp was quite surprising considering he does not play any format apart from one-day and there is no ODI’s in place during the near future.
“We have not got any ODI cricket till next year. So I do not see any reason he should be doing fitness test now when we have one-day cricket in after six months. So we will start work with him in the future,” said Villavarayan.
The only cricketer who could not take part in the fitness test was Soumya Sarkar as he had hurt his leg. It was learnt Soumya will start running after two days.
