Bangladesh head coach Russell Domingo backed Mohammad Naim’s inclusion in the playing XI and said the left-hander deserved a spot in the second game against Afghanistan despite being on a poor run of form.
Naim scored nine off 15 balls in the second game and two off five in the first T20I against the Afghans.
The southpaw has played 34 T20Is for the Tigers so far totaling 809 runs with an average of 24.51 and strike rate of 103.71.
Prior to that the top-order batter had a poor season in the Bangabandhu Bangladesh Premier League Twenty20 2022 for Minister Group Dhaka where he garnered 50 runs from seven innings with an average of 8.33 and strike rate of 65.78.
Although the opener got few chances in his preferred opening position, as a batsman scoring 50 runs from 76 balls in the whole tournament looked really poor.
Despite his lean form Naim opened the innings for Bangladesh on both occasions against Afghanistan.
“Five games ago everyone was saying Liton (Das) should be dropped. Now everyone is saying Liton is the best player in the world. Sometimes players go through slumps in form. Coaches and selectors have to support those players. It is an important part of coaching and building a team. Naim was the right guy to play. He is our highest-rated T20I batsman, if the media don’t know that. He deserves his spot,” Domingo said after losing the second T20I against Afghanistan yesterday.
Bangladesh are having a poor run of late in T20Is as they have lost nine games out of last 10.
Five of the losses came against various opponents in the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup last year, three losses came against Pakistan at home and one against Afghanistan yesterday.
The head coach admitted that there are lots of areas to improve for the Tigers to become a better side but improving fielding will be one of the major areas of concern.
“We lost to South Africa, England, Pakistan, the West Indies and Sri Lanka among our last 10 games. They are not bad sides. Those are good sides. In this format, once you lose confidence and momentum, it can easily get into a run to lose games. We need to do a lot of improvement in this particular format. We are long way from where we need to be in this format. We started going in the right direction but there has been some hiccups off late," said the South African.
“Also we have dropped nine catches in the last five games. Whether it is the concentration, confidence or dealing with pressure, I am not 100% sure. We just have to make sure we try to improve. We make too many mistakes in the field that have cost us. It cost us in the T20 World Cup, here, Test matches. Just too many dropped catches. You can do all the drills in practice but the players have to catch the balls in the games. It is the bottom line,” Domingo concluded.
