Bangladesh wicketkeeper-batsman Mushfiqur Rahim believes the Test side have the ability to improve themselves and join the top six in the ranking, but admitted that they have to perform consistently in away series’ in order to achieve the feat.
The Tigers are in ninth position among the top 10 Test sides, and have only 55 rating points, two less than Afghanistan (57).
But since the Afghans have only played three Tests so far, they are not accountable yet in the ranking.
Among those three Tests, Afghanistan defeated Bangladesh last year, that too by a huge margin of 224 runs in Chittagong’s Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium.
Apart from the hammering against the Afghans, the Tigers also lost four away Tests in 2019 – two against New Zealand and two against India – and all of those losses came by innings margin.
The last Test Bangladesh played was against Pakistan in Rawalpindi in 2020, and the Tigers also lost that by an innings margin.
Six defeats in as many Tests certainly shows that Bangladesh still have a lot to improve in the longer version, and that’s what Mushfiq mentioned while chatting on facebook live Thursday afternoon.
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“I truly believe that as a team we have many things to achieve in Test cricket. We have played Test cricket for 20 years and yet, we have not achieved our goal, despite having some good players over the years. But we did well in the last few years in Tests, particularly in our home conditions. Our performance graph in the last few years in home series’ will show that. Now our main concern is improving in away series’. A big challenge is waiting for us in near future. Test Championship has started recently. It’s a big challenge for us,” said Mushfiq.
“I believe our improvement should be team-wise, and we shouldn’t concentrate on individual performance in Tests. We have to target at least top six position in Test ranking. Obviously, we have ability to enter into top six, but we need to work hard.
“We need to start the process of improving our performance in Tests Championship. We started the planning. We are scheduled to play a few Tests in home against the likes of Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies. We have good hope against these teams as we have played well against such big teams in recent years in home conditions. But as you know play has been stopped due to Covid-19 pandemic.
“Anyways, I think if we can perform consistently in Tests in the next few years as a team then we might find a few players in the top 10 batsmen or bowlers list in ICC ranking as well, along with our improvement in team ranking,” the 32-year old concluded.
Mushfiq is in 19th position with 655 rating points in the Test batsmen’s ranking, while opening batsman Tamim Iqbal is 27th (598) and captain Mominul Haque is 39th (556).
Australia’s Steve Smith leads the chart with 911 rating points while Virat Kohli is second with 886.