Hemp to help Bangladesh in Pak Tests

They will play two red-ball games in August

David Hemp, a former Bermuda cricketer, has recently taken up the role of batting coach for Bangladesh’s men’s national cricket team.

His previous experience includes coaching the Pakistan national women’s team. This background is significant as Bangladesh prepares for their upcoming Test series in Pakistan, part of the ICC Test Championship.

Hemp shared his thoughts in an interview, highlighting the challenges and strategies for the series. He acknowledged the strength of the Pakistani team and their home advantage. He also discussed the importance of understanding the pitch conditions, which have favored batting in recent years.

I think Pakistan are a strong side… and will be backing themselves to put up a good performance on home soil. It’s not going to be an easy series in terms of conditions and surfaces. But traditionally, what we have seen over the last couple of years is that there have been good batting surfaces,” Hemp told The Daily Star.

Hemp emphasized the need for Bangladesh’s players to manage swing and reverse swing bowling effectively.

“It’s conventional swing to start with and then reverse swing plays an important part in the game. But until we get there and see the conditions, because they might decide to leave grass on the wicket or it might be so much grass that the wicket might be suppressive [for batters], we aren’t going to know about it. The key plan is managing conventional swing and then the reverse swing, and how we can assist the players to understand what they might come up against,” he added.

He noted that successful teams in Pakistan have focused on occupying the crease and being strategic in their fielding and bowling.

“If you look at the teams that had gone to Pakistan in the last couple of years, it’s about occupying the crease for most of the time… so that you can bowl properly and set fields too. The matches had generally gone into the last day because they were very good for batting. For [taking] wickets, you have to work really hard but if you do get the ball swinging and reverse swinging, you have a really good chance to knock people over,” he concluded.