New Zealand head coach Luke Ronchi talked up the impact of spin bowling coach Saqlian Mushtaq, particularly his knowledge of conditions in Bangladesh, where they play two Tests starting on November 28. Mushtaq was with the white-ball team in the same capacity on New Zealand’s tour of Pakistan earlier this year.
“I mean his (Saqlain) knowledge of these parts of the world is fantastic and the way he can talk with our spinners and sort of coach them in different areas with, I guess, the trajectory, lines, lengths, and different things like reading a wicket as well, sort of how it might play. It’s fantastic,” Ronchi said.”And I guess he played a lot of international cricket. He’s been around for a long, long time. To use his knowledge is very big thing for us,” he concluded.
New Zealand have armed themselves with five spin options – Ish Sodhi, Ajaz Patel, Mitchell Santner, Rachin Ravindra and Glenn Phillips – for this tour of the Bangladesh – four more than how many they toured with back in 2013.
“I think that’s the nature of cricket in Bangladesh, isn’t it? There’s a lot more spinners involved,” Rochi opined. “I think, with the trainings we’ve had and sort of the way the surfaces have played there, we’re expecting a bit more up and down, a bit more turn. So, we’ll see how it goes, see how it plays out,” he said.
While they are loaded in the spin department, one big test could be about how they play spin themselves as batters. Ronchi reckoned reverse sweep is one shot that batters around the world have used a lot to counter turn a lot more in recent years, and that the New Zealand batters need to find their own way of combating the challenge.
“I think around the world now you see reverse sweeping coming into it a heck load more now which does make it more challenging for bowlers. But again, that’s how guys are going to play it. They need to work out the surface and adapt to that surface in whichever way they think is going to help them the best to score the runs they can score,” Ronchi said.
“But again, we play a lot of cricket in the subcontinent, we’ve played everywhere now that we’ve toured in Pakistan as well, so, the guys have their own tactics and how they play,” he said.
“For the majority of our group here, they have been in India, they’ve been at the World Cups, and they’ve been practicing on different surfaces, slower and turning sort of surfaces. So that hopefully helps us for this Test series,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s an advantage(being in the subcontinent for the last couple of months) but it’s definitely gonna help us. I think if we’d come straight from green wickets in New Zealand to the Bangladesh wickets, it’s a big change,” he added.
Ronchi was also quizzed about the home Test defeat to Bangladesh at Mount Maunganui in 2022, and whether that still hurts. “No, that’s part of international cricket,” Ronchi said. “I think teams get better playing in different parts of the world. And Bangladesh played really well in that Test match. You don’t want to be losing at home, but it’s also part of the process of playing the international game. So, we want to come here and play as well as we can and compete as much as we can,” he said.
After the first Test from November 28 in Sylhet, the action will shift to the national capital in Dhaka for the second game from December 6.
