Matt79
Hall of Fame Member
That's not always true. Its true if you have a certain level of talent and a young side, and most importantly the structure and support to take onboard those lessons and use them to keep on improving. On the other hand, Bermuda or Canada could play Australia 100 times and not really derive much benefit from it. Ponting made this point about playing the USA in the second-to-last CT - the match was over in something like 3 hours (inc. change of innings) and it was hard to see what the US players would have taken away from it except that they weren't good enough to compete at that level.The more often Bangladesh and others play the top teams, the better they will get. Simple.
You do improve by competing against equally or more talented opposition, but only if the gap in ability is reasonable enough to give you some chance. That's the case for Bangladesh, but its nowhere near the case for the associate nations, at least definitely not in the longer form of the game, and pretty much the case in ODIs as well.