Mumbai, February 16 Nepal coach Nick Pothas believes that the country's players need to be put under more pressure moving forward in order to achieve tangible improvements, and he urged them to avoid repeating mistakes from the last two matches when they play their final T20 World Cup game against Scotland here on Tuesday.
Nepal had a promising start to their T20 World Cup campaign with a narrow loss to England in the final over, but their performance has declined significantly since, losing heavily to Italy and the West Indies by 10 and nine wickets respectively.
"If we are going to improve Nepal cricket, we need to have the necessary infrastructure in place. Teams only get better when there is pressure on players to perform. I'm not sure what exists in Nepal, but players need to feel like they are under pressure to perform in order for your cricket to improve," Pothas told reporters ahead of the Group C match here.
Pothas said that there is a lot of talent in the team, but the pace of learning is not as fast as it should be.
"Unfortunately, what we are not doing is learning fast enough as a group. Leading into the Scotland game, all we want to see guys do is compete, but not make the same errors that we are making repeatedly. That is the important part."
"We are a very energetic side, a very passionate side with a great following that have come to watch us play, so we would like to give that following something to remember this World Cup by," Pothas added.
The former South African wicketkeeper-batter also said that exposure to conditions and situations outside their comfort zone has also affected Nepal's performances.
"We are expecting the players to learn quicker, (but) now what makes that a little bit more difficult is exposure to various conditions and exposure to high-level cricket," he said.
"For these players, a lot of their cricket is played in Nepal where the pitches suit their style of play and you can get away with not executing quite as much because of the standard of the cricket. When you come to a World Cup, you don't get away with that kind of thing."
Pothas admitted that Nepal will need a more robust structure in domestic cricket in order to strengthen the national side.
"That is a conversation to be had with (Cricket Association of Nepal's secretary) Paras (Khadka) as to how we structure the side," he said.
"One thing I will say is that I've been on three different assignments with Nepal and in every one of those assignments, we've had two managers in the change room and they've been different managers."
