Bangladesh Test captain Mominul Haque is confident that his team will have enough preparation time before returning to the field for the Test series in Sri Lanka.
Bangladesh haven't played any form of international cricket since March when the COVID-19 pandemic had just started to firm its deadly grip.
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The viral outbreak led to the postponement of the three-Test series against Sri Lanka from the original July-August window among Bangladesh's other international fixtures.
However, according to Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) officials, the series can now be held in October. The BCB, and its Sri Lankan counterpart, SLC, further says a report by Cricbuzz, "are now waiting for necessary approvals from the Sri Lankan government and health ministry (Bangladesh) that are required before travelling" for the Test championship fixtures.
In the first phase of training after the lengthy hiatus, the BCB allowed only 10 cricketers to resume individual training at different venues from July 26. The second phase that began on Saturday (August 8), however, saw a larger number of players, including Mominul, go through the grind in Dhaka, Rajshahi, Khulna, Chattogram and Sylhet.
The skipper feels it won't take him and other players long to be ready for the series against the Asian rivals, an itinerary for which is yet to be finalised.
"Everything seems quite new to me as this is my first day in the training session but I am happy to return after a long gap and I will take couple of days to adapt and get back the rhythm as I was away for long," said Mominul after a session at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
"I was missing cricket badly and it feels bad watching others play but I am hopeful as we are also making move on the same direction."
"It seems to me that when we go into international cricket [with the Test series against Sri Lanka in the coming days] we will get enough time to take our preparation," he added.
"Practice along with practice matches will be good preparation for us and we are planning to complete it [preparation] fully before beginning the upcoming Test series."
Mominul also pointed out that the extended break amid the pandemic gave Bangladeshi players much-needed time off to recharge their batteries and think about their strengths, weaknesses.
"We have got a chance to think about our cricket during the lockdown period as we had no work to do," he said. "Many of us have done more or less work on fitness but there are few who worked on the psychological aspect of their game. We have worked with coaches on technical and tactical aspects of how we can improve skill-wise our games. Many of us work personally on how we develop our own game."
"It seems to me that we could do well if we capitalize on what we have worked on[ during this break] because if we were playing we could have got less chances to work by taking a look at our self from outside the field and how we can improve our games," Mominul concluded.
(Inputs from Cricbuzz)
