It is indeed a great pleasure that finally the much-awaited home series against England team is taking place brushing aside all doubts loomed over it. The stage is all set for the big cricketing event. The series, in all respect, carries a great deal of significance for the Tigers as they have not played international cricket for a long time.

Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB)’s decision to have conditioning camp ahead of the series that began from Monday is a wise one to keep the players on the track ahead of the series. The ODI series against Afghanistan on home ground will also certainly help for fine tuning of the team ahead of the England series. The England team is now in a very good form that is why it is a big challenge for the home side to play well against them and they have to make sure that they will fight with all means.

The inclusion of Courtney Walsh, the great West Indian bowler, as bowling consultant is no doubt will help the team a lot to strengthen their bowling performance. Not to forget the fact that Walsh ruled the cricket world with his partner Courtney Ambrose during their time. Walsh is the first bowler to attain the rare feat of 5 hundred Test wickets haul. In his long career as a bowler, he took 519 wickets in 132 test matches and 227 wickets in 205 ODIs.

So Walsh is the right man to guide skipper Masharafee and his bowlers to turn into a nightmare for the English batsmen. As far one can guess the first thing the West Indian would do to find the right combination for captain Mash. Who could be the best choice rather than wonder boy Mustafiz? However, Walsh has to find an alternative, as Fizz will be out of action due to surgery for shoulder injury. So he has to work it out. It is now a challenge what bowling attack Bangladesh would design for the upcoming series against England as our bowling is mostly dependent on spinners as  we lack quality fast bowlers except for Mashrafee and Mustafiz. Although it is not possible to produce quality fast bowlers within this short time, no doubt we will see some positive changes with Walsh in action.

Although we have quality batsmen in the team, they lack consistency especially in the top order and opening partnership became a matter of concern for the team in the past. However, with Sri Lankan Thilan Samaraweera as batting coach we certainly can hope the Tigers will overcome the issues in batting. Now it is the prime task for the head coach Chandika Hauturusinghe, bowling coach Courtney Walsh, and batting coach Thilan Samaraweera to find the combination of the team ahead of the series, and it is obvious that they will leave no stone unturned to do that. One thing should be kept in mind that Bangladesh’s statistics in Test cricket is very poor and it is high time they improve the tally, and England series should be a perfect one to do that. Let’s hope they play well and make us feel proud.

*Writer works as a Joint News Editor in ATN News