Road to 2023 begins with Windies

A fluke or just a good day at the office may see a minnow defeating a powerhouse once in a while but for a team to win any major trophy requires long-term planning and proper execution.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) was in tatters prior to the 2015 World Cup. Just months before that edition, England sacked ODI skipper Alastair Cook and replaced him with his deputy Eoin Morgan. They also selected players from outside the ODI contingent with no explanation or logic behind it.

And that left Morgan sipping on wine and going through his diary -- which he kept throughout the World Cup to jot down points about how a good team would look like and the attributes needed -- while on his flight back from Australia after their 2015 World Cup debacle.

The woe of England being knocked out from the group stage after enduring losses to New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2015 was only soothed after Morgan lifted England's maiden World Cup four years later in front of a home crowd at Lord's. But the turnaround from being knocked out in the group stage to being crowned champions was a lengthy process including some bold, meaningful and effective decisions by the ECB.

Apart from Morgan's captaincy, a lot had changed between 2015 to 2019 for English cricket. That included putting right people at the helm and sticking to the decisions they took. A new director of cricket -- former England skipper Andrew Strauss -- and a new coach, Australian Trevor Bayliss, were hired. But most important of all was their change in mindset about how they wanted to play the game in the coming years -- an aggressive brand of cricket with specialists in the ODI format.   

The result? England scored 350-plus runs on 16 occasions since then till the beginning of the 2019 World Cup with the highest-ever ODI total of 481 for six coming against Australia in 2018. The team had won 15 of their 19 bi-lateral series during that period and also replaced India as the number one ODI team in May 2018, which they carried into the 2019 World Cup.

How thoughtful planning culminates in great results can also be gauged from the journey of the Bangladesh Under-19 side that brought the country's first World Cup in February this year. The triumph of the cubs in South Africa in the biggest age-level competition was the result of the work put in by the think tank, led by the Chairman of the game development committee Khaled Mahmud, in the two years prior to the competition. From sketching out tour plans to keeping the batch closely as a unit for two years, all had impacted the outcome.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) are probably now working on making a plan for the Tigers' West Indies series at home next month. The ODI series against Windies is especially important as it will see the Tigers kicking off their World Cup Super League series, the qualification pathway for the 2023 World Cup. The board that has a penchant for stop-gap solutions -- the plans for the Under-19 World Cup being a notable exception -- will be benefited if they make plans with a long-term goal in mind instead of formulating them for just one series.

All 13 teams -- 12 full members of the ICC and the Netherlands -- in the World Cup Super League will play eight ODI series, each comprising three matches, against any eight of the other 12 teams. Four of those series will be at home and the other four away.

Starting with the Windies series next month, Bangladesh are scheduled to play three more home series against Sri Lanka, England and Afghanistan and away series against Ireland, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and South Africa as part of the newly formed ODI super league till the 2023 World Cup. And with seven top teams including hosts India gaining direct qualification to the next quadrennial event, the importance for Bangladesh to collect as many points from the 12 home matches in the league is paramount.

And ahead of the upcoming Windies series, the BCB, just like the England cricket board, would now need to decide how they want to play their cricket in the coming years if they want to fare any better in the upcoming edition of the World Cup than their eighth-place finish in the 2019 edition. The board could start by including and more importantly sticking with players who have shown potential in the recently concluded Bangabandhu T20 Cup and the BCB President's Cup earlier. It is time to plan for the future, and as England showed, that means taking the tough decisions and it will be interesting to see who the BCB entrusts with Bangladesh's long-term cricketing health.