Australia tour was a good learning curve, says Liton Das

Liton Das was the skipper of the BCB’s High Performance (HP) unit which toured Australia recently for a 5 One-Day and a 3-day match. Bangladesh managed to win all matches with Liton having a middling series. The essential objective of the tour was to get acclimatised to the alien conditions of Australia and Liton said that the team focused on that aspect.

All of just 22, Liton has been tipped to replace Mushfiqur Rahim behind the stumps in order the let the latter concentrate more on his batting. He has so far appeared in 4 Tests and has one half-century with the bat batting at No. 7. He has impressed everyone since making his debut against India at Fatullah in the lone Test in 2015. He also scored an attracting 45-ball 44 on his debut as a 20-year old boy. An injury prevented him to not take part in the historic win over Bangladesh in the second Test at the P Sara Oval in Colombo.

Plenty to gain from the tour

Liton’s experience in Australia will surely keep him in good stead whenever the national team tours down under. He stressed on learning a lot on the tour.

“We went there to get some first-hand experience about the conditions, as it was a conditioning camp. We felt something different on the very first day. But we learnt a lot,” he said.

Wicket-keeper not worried about lack of runs

Liton live up to his expectations on the tour as a batsman but isn’t fretting over it because of the immense experience he gathered down under. He was pleased with his overall batting approach.

“I had the scope to do well. But I failed. I was initially confused whether to play shots or not. But with time went by, I became more comfortable with my batting approach.”

Liton has been a heavy scorer in domestic cricket. In 39 first-class games, the 22-year old has made 3070 runs at 49.51 including 9 hundreds and 15 half-centuries. In List A cricket he made 2385 runs at 39.09 with a highest score of 139. He has also played 9 ODIs with limited success making just 124 runs at 15.50.