Shakib Al Hasan will have his task cut out when he leads Bangladesh in the upcoming two-match T20 International series against the rampaging South Africa.
The Asian side had arrived in South Africa with full of optimism, having done exceedingly well across formats in the last couple of years.
They had registered Test wins over the likes of England, Sri Lanka and Australia in addition to winning ODI series against India and South Africa. However, those performances counted for little in South Africa, as they found it tough to pose a challenge for the hosts let alone winning a game. In fact, the margins of defeat only got bigger with every passing game.
Barring the first innings of the first Test when Mushfiqur Rahim & Co. posted 320, Bangladesh did not come up with any notable performance and as a result, lost all the games so far on tour. They lost the first Test by 333 runs before losing the next by an innings and 254 runs. It followed by a ten-wicket defeat, 104-run defeat and 200-run defeat in the three-match ODI series.
Pressure is there but newly-appointed skipper Shakib is not overthinking about it and is hopeful that the players will understand.
“I don’t have any feeling about it [captaincy], and I am not thinking about it either,” Shakib told reporters on the eve of the T20I series opener. “The more you think, the more you have a problem. We need to play as a team, and everyone is matured so just hope that they understand their role,” added Shakib who got stripped off captaincy after Bangladesh’s poor performance against Zimbabwe in 2011.
Bangladesh will be hoping that a change in format arrests their poor form and Shakib feels the shortest format of the game is the best for his team at the moment.
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“T20 is a short format, and you don’t have much time to think and [you] have to come up with your best on the spot. It can be good for us as there is very little time to think,” Shakib said.
“In Test and ODIs there is a lot of time to think that can complicate things at times. But as the time is short here the chance of complications is also reduced and just by keeping everything simple we can come up with a good brand of cricket.”