Australia’s Litchfield says pitches in Bangladesh have ‘hidden demons’
Australia women’s cricket team toured Bangladesh for the first time in April for a white-ball series. Australia won all the matches quite convincingly but a host of their batters found batting difficult on low, slow pitches in Mirpur.
Big-hitting batter Phoebe Litchfield was one of them. The southpaw, who strikes at 80.6 in ODIs and 161.9 in T20Is, scored only 19 runs across four white-ball fixtures in Bangladesh.
In a recent interview with ESPNCricinfo, the batter opened up about the difficulties she faced while batting in Bangladesh.
“It was very different to anything we’ve played on, even compared to India,” she said. “You try and read the pitch, but it just has some hidden demons so playing six games on there, hopefully it’s given us some experience and learnings.”
Bangladesh will host the Women’s T20 World Cup in October this year and Litchfield hopes the pitches will be “truer” in that tournament.
“I’ve never played on anything like it. You tap and go ‘okay, that’s alright, it’s a bit soft’ but for it to turn the way it did, even our pace bowlers got some purchase off it as well. Hopefully we get some truer pitches for the World Cup, but you never know so those six games we did have, and they were all different, will hopefully stand us in good stead.”
