Phil Simmons serves as the head coach of the Bangladesh national team, while senior assistant coach Mohammad Salauddin manages the team’s batting unit. Recently, Salauddin has faced criticism due to the team’s repeated batting failures. However, captain Litton Das placed the responsibility on the players, avoiding blame on the coaches.
Bangladesh suffered a 5-wicket defeat to the West Indies in the last T20 match, completing a series whitewash. After the match, Litton said at a press conference, “A coach can only advise you; he doesn’t play on the field. He provides guidance, but it’s up to us to perform. Our coaches are giving us full support. The failure lies with us—we couldn’t bat well. I hope we can learn from this and perform better in the future.”
Batting first, Bangladesh scored 151 runs. According to Litton, that was a reasonable total given the conditions. He added, “If you bat on a 200-run wicket, the batters will naturally score. There’s no avoiding that. In the Afghanistan series, we defended 160 runs. Today’s wicket played similarly to a 160-run wicket, so not every batter’s strike rate would be high.”
He also noted that dew helped the West Indies in the second innings, saying, “We were a bit unlucky today. Some things are beyond our control, like the weather. We can predict the pitch, but it’s not always accurate. They played three spinners too, expecting the wicket to turn, and it did. There was no dew on the first two days, but today the entire match was affected by dew.”
Litton further said, “When we batted, the pitch was dry and the ball had good grip. By the time they batted, everything favored them. We tried our best, and the bowlers put in a solid effort. If we had managed 200 runs in the first innings—which is almost impossible on this wicket—the result might have been different. Still, 151 runs was a decent total, had the pitch stayed dry and there been no dew.”