Bangladesh head coach Steve Rhodes stressed the need to improve players’ power hitting capability what is much-needed to bring successes and victories more in shorter format of cricket.

Rhodes also said that he has seen it in some players of the team after assuming new job in Bangladesh ahead of his first assignment in West Indies.  

“When I came to this job, I looked some of the areas at T20 what is needed to improve. I looked at some of the power hitting and I saw the West Indies as a great example of some very strong guys who power hit, mishit sixes. I felt that that was something that we could work on,” Steve Rhodes said.

“They surprised me again, Bangladesh, because they hit some good sixes. You’ve seen today, we did a bit of range hitting today and they could hit long balls. I think that’s an area that’s definitely getting better but we always want to improve even more. And the fielding, we’ve worked hard on the fielding,” Rhodes told.

“At the moment, the Bangladeshi players are not the greatest athletes in the world if you look at some... like the specimen of the West Indies players. On our day we can field extremely well. We want to try and get a bit more consistency in our fielding. Those are two key areas. I’m really happy with the skill levels the players possess,” he added.

Citing BPL as the best platform for the players, the Tigers’ head coach said that they could improve their stroke-making and power-hitting skills from the tournament what are required for the success in T20.

“Things like BPL is really good for them because it gives them a great opportunity to showcase their skills. Some of the variations Saifuddin and Abu Hider can bowl, as well as the big boys – they know what to do and they know how to play T20,” the English-born coach said.

“My job is to make sure that we get to the match in one piece and we’re in a good frame of mind and we’re thinking positively about the win. The last practice went well and hopefully we’ve areas to improve, but we’ll get there,” he continued.

A new record is in line for Bangladesh if they could triumph Twenty20 series against the West Indies after their awesome Test and ODI series victories, they will be proud of to be part of their new record.

Despite being very close door of the record on few occasions, Bangladesh are yet to able to win three formats of series. This time they have a golden opportunity for them to match the record. For this, winning the first match in Sylhet is important for them.  

When asked the possibility of sweeping three series, the head coach said that it is definitely possible but in cricket where you may lose or win and dropping the prediction, he said they will attempt their utmost best to win for the Tigers.   

“Definitely possible,” giving a straightforward answer, the coach later said, “Sport is tough.”

“You win and you lose and sometimes you don’t know why you win and you don’t why you lose. So I don’t go into predicting things,” he said.

“All I’ll say is we’ll be trying really hard for Bangladesh,” he also said.

“We know that we would love to beat the West Indies in three series. But these guys have also had a bit of a beating in India and also in the two series against us, so they would not like to go back to the Caribbean without a series. So it will be very tough, all I can say is to the cricket lovers in Bangladesh is that we will give it our best shot,” he added.