Bangladesh Cricket Board’s High Performance unit coach Toby Radford said that his first priority is to prepare his charges for the trial and tribulation of Test cricket and in turn help the Tigers develop into a better Test side.
The HP team is currently training under Radford for the first time since he got appointed by BCB in August to replace Simon Helmot.
A total of 26 players, which also included 13 players from Bangladesh’s Under-19 World Cup winning team, have been training under their new coach at the BCB Academy since Tuesday and the focus on training has been on red-ball cricket from the get go, said Radford.
‘I said this to the board and I have said it to the players, that what I want to create is a group of players that can really stand up in Test cricket,’ Radford said in a virtual press conference on Thursday.
‘The players need to be technically tight, face 90 mph bowling, bat for five hours and bowl in long spells. So, the whole of the first 10 days of this 14-15 day camp is red-ball cricket. It’s designed to test technique and to work on the areas that need working on,’ he added.
Radford has seen in person the drastic difference in Bangladesh’s red-ball and white-ball cricket, as he was working as West Indies’ assistant coach during the Tigers tour to the Caribbean in 2018, where they were completely outplayed in the Tests before winning both one-day international and Twenty20 series.
Radford wanted to play a part in changing the Test culture of Bangladesh by getting young players to shift their focus to the longer version and help the side perform in home and away against top opponents.
‘Talking to local coaches here, they are saying a lot of the young players don’t play a lot of red-ball cricket. So their mindset is to score all the time… This whole period for me is about testing them, getting players that can play Test cricket, that can go and deliver in a Test team.
‘I would like to see Bangladesh become really competitive in Test cricket, but not just in Bangladesh. And the only way you are going to play Mitchell Starc in Australia is if you train for Mitchell Starc here; with the bowling machine really turned up to really get the players used to it,’ said the Welshman.
Radford was also the coach of Nazmul XI in the recently concluded BCB President’s Cup, where he joined the team mid tournament, and some young players have already impressed him.
But Radford refrained from singling out any player, as he wanted more time to judge his pupils.
‘In my own mind there are three or four, but it would be really unfair to name them after just two or three days… I want to see more of them. It’s very easy for someone to excel in the first week then you see others come up.’
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