Sultana: Bangladesh 'can surprise any team when we perform as a whole unit'

Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana said that they are banking on the confidence and familiarity of playing their favourite format ahead of their first-ever bilateral women's ODI series in Australia. The visitors will take the field for their first-over WODI in Australia too, having only played in the country during the Women's T20 World Cup in 2020.

Bangladesh are coming off a pretty ordinary campaign in the Asian Games where they failed to win a medal. They also haven't had a great time in ODIs of late, having lost their previous series against Sri Lanka, at home, quite comprehensively. Their last ODI series win was against Ireland at home in 2024. Bangladesh also have a pretty poor record against Australia, having lost to them in their last five encounters. Still, Sultana wanted to focus on the positive side of things, taking on the pre-eminent side in the world.

"I think this is the format we play well," Sultana said. "We have that potential in this format both at home and in overseas conditions. We have some specialist players who actually played this format really well. We really hope that we will try to execute our plans in the middle. It is all about the mindset, and we really want to play positive cricket here.

"We are excited and pretty happy to be here. It's always been challenging when you are playing in different conditions. The team looks good. We have played a practice game here, so we have got some ideas what we are going to face. So, yeah, it's just a team game. We just want to express ourselves."

Answering a question about whether the men's drawn Test series in August would inspire them, Sultana said: "I think it's pretty important to be in the present and we were really hoping that we can play as a whole unit because we believe that when we play as a team and perform as a whole unit, we can surprise any team."

Sultana said that they are looking forward to new coach David Hemp giving us a lay of the land, particularly having played and coached in Australia in the past. "He just joined us, and we are working with him for the last two tournaments for a short period of time. We got some ideas from him about what the pitch is going to be like, and how they will try to attack us. We are trying to practice in that way in the net session," said Sultana.

Hemp said that he has told the team not to go back home with regret about not being positive in Australia. "They are a good team with really good individual players. My expectations are around being positive within the game, and what we don't want is to get back to Bangladesh in a week's time and say, 'oh, I wish we'd played this way, I wish we'd played that way'.

"We need to be positive in how we go about everything that we do and how we not just play the game, but also approach the game and how we think about the game. As long as we're doing that, then we'll move forward in a positive way," he said.