Bangladeshi cricketers have been improving their fitness level significantly as they prepare for the forthcoming international assignments, said team officials on Wednesday.
Tigers went through a one-and-half-month long fitness camp which was coupled with skill camp during the last three weeks in order to get them prepared ahead of home series against Afghanistan and England.
On average, each individual covered the distance of 2100 metres during their Wednesday’s rigorous fitness test that came as an indication of their level of endurance.
The last day’s drills were divided into four categories that began with the skin fold test followed by the movement competency test and jumping test
The fitness test was concluded with the beep test.
Cricketers faced those tests on Wednesday at Mirpur Indoor Stadium and showed marked improvement from where they began July 20.
Iftekharul Islam, who started the test before he was joined by Sri Lankan Mario Villavarayen, looked optimistic with the outcome.
‘They had improved at least 25 per cent from where they had begun,’ Iftekhar told New Age on Wednesday.
‘The coach is happy with the outcome that I believe is the outcome of their hard work,’ he said.
According to statistics, members of the 30-member preliminary squad on an average scored 10.8 points during their opening fitness test while they earned approximately 11.5 points on an average on Wednesday.
Tiger’s Sri Lankan trainer Villavarayan was also impressed with the performance of the cricketers and said they are expected to reap the benefit as they did in the previous season.
‘I am happy with today’s outcome as they did well and met my expectations,’ said Villavarayan.
‘We had a similar programme last season and it served us well as we turned out to be quite a fit unit afterwards,’ said Villavarayan.
Bangladesh’s Test skipper Mushfiqur Rahim turned out to be the fittest cricketer as usual while improvement of leg-spinner Jubair Hossain was also remarkable.
The fitness of Jubair came up under scanner after he fared quite badly during the initial fitness test while he looked to have pulled up his socks to avoid further embarrassment.
Jubair’s skin-fold mark was 91 during the opening test while he reduced it to 83 at present to show that he is getting fitter.
Batsman Nasir Hossain said that he is confident that they will be benefitted through the fitness camp as they have a tight international schedule ahead.
‘We won’t have the chance to have such kind of a fitness camp in the next one and a half year because we have a lot of matches ahead,’ said Nasir.
‘Chances of injury during the middle of tournaments would have increased if we could not complete such kind of a camp.
‘We were benefitted from this camp earlier as it reduced chances of our injury,’ he said.
-With New Age input
