National opener Imrul Kayes urged the Bangladesh Cricket Board to arrange at least one four-day warm-up match for them before they being the Zimbabwe tour in July.
Bangladesh will leave home in the last week of July to play a Test and five one-day internationals against Zimbabwe beginning on August 4.
This will be the first Test for Bangladesh in more than a year as they last played Test against England at Manchester in June 2011.
The national players since then have hardly participated in any form of the longer version cricket as they were engaged in preparing themselves for the World Cup.
They were scheduled to face New Zealand for two Tests matches in October 2011 but the cricket board scrapped the schedule to facilitate their World Cup preparation.
After the World Cup, they faced Australia at home but the series featured only three one-day internationals.
The cricket board made them available for the National Cricket League final between Rajshahi and Dhaka but only a very few players were in a position to take the opportunity.
‘We need to play a four-day match before the tour as we will play a Test match after a long gap,’ Kayes told reporters on Tuesday after an optional batting session at Mirpur in Dhaka.
‘We have been out of the longer version cricket for a long time and there is always a chance of a problem. We may struggle with our shot selection or may lack enough concentration,’ he said.
The board is now holding a fitness training camp for the players as they do not have a coach for the national team. The players will start skills training only in July.
It was reported that Bangladesh would play a four-day match against South Africa A team before they land in Zimbabwe but the chief executive officer of the Bangladesh Cricket Board said the match was yet not confirmed.
‘We are yet not confirm our practice match in South Africa,’ Manzur Ahmed, the chief executive officer of the cricket board told reporters on Tuesday.
-With The Daily Star input
