The opening batsman of the Bangladesh cricket team, Tamim Iqbal, has said that the Bangladeshi players don’t play enough test cricket and that’s why, their performance in the longest format of the game has been poor.

In 2012, the Bangladesh team played very few test matches. They played a couple of test matches against West Indies towards the end of the year. That was their first test series in the last 11 months. Bangladesh lost that series by 2-0.

The Bangladesh team will play its next series after a break of 3 months. That will be a 2-match test series against Sri Lanka in March. Thereafter, in April, they will play a 2-match test series with Zimbabwe.

When asked about the poor performance of the Bangladeshi team in test cricket, Tamim said, “One of the main reasons of our poor performance is that we don’t play too many test matches. We play very few test matches and that too after long gaps. So, that makes it difficult for the players to be consistent in this format of the game.”

“When you play test cricket regularly, you learn to take right decisions at the right time. But, if you don’t play test cricket too often, you find it difficult to soak the pressure in test matches. I think we will start getting better if we play more test matches.”

When asked about the performance of the Bangladesh team against West Indies, Tamim said, “I think we did well in every format. We lost both the test matches, but, we fought hard in the test series as well and succeeded in putting the Caribbean team under pressure at times.”

“In the ODI series, our performance was outstanding. That was probably one of our best performances so far. We fought till the last ball in the only T20 that we played. So, the overall performance of the team was quite satisfactory.”