“The hardest thing I am finding out is we are so fragile mentally. The players are scarred by previous results and are nervous when they take the field outside of Bangladesh,” said Ord on the eve of the Tajikistan clash.“All I can say as a coach is that the players gave everything they had for their country and tried so hard to do their best. That is all any of us can ask and we need to keep supporting them as best we can as anything else is just going to make the situation worse,” he added. Ord informed that he is not reading too much into the Jordan defeat as the opposition were thorough in their preparation, in stark contrast to Bangladesh. “Jordan have come off the back of an eight-month preparation. They cooperated with the clubs who released them one day every week to help build a proper team and be successful. Then they were playing 90 minutes for their clubs every week,” said Ord. “The BPL ended in December. That is seven months ago. What our players have been doing does not compare to these other countries and it is not possible for them to compete at this level in the present circumstances. One of our players (Hemanta Vincent Biswas) had to be substituted in the first half as he was too tired physically and mentally to continue,” he added.
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The England-born Australia tactician said they will only carry out a post-mortem of their performance once their Qualifiers campaign ends. “Now is probably not the time to go too deeply into the reasons as we still have two more games to play and need to refocus on them. At the end of the tournament, when the dust has settled, it is important that the information and experience from the trip is analysed,” he explained. He continued, “It's one thing to be able to last for 90 minutes but it's another thing to be fully conditioned to play 90 minutes at peak performance. That takes six or seven games.” The match begins at 7:30pm, Bangladesh standard time.