Skipper Mahmudullah Riyad remains satisfied with his team’s preparation for the T20 World Cup despite Bangladesh ending the Super 12 stage of the tournament with five losses in as many games on Thursday.
Bangladesh had prepared for the world tournament after winning two series at home against Australia and New Zealand but there was substantial criticism of the team’s selection process.
Bangladesh won seven of the ten matches, five against the Australians and five against the New Zealanders, but all with the help of the pitch in Mirpur. The sluggish, low, and turning tracks hampered not only the away teams, but also the Bangladesh batsmen. Despite the criticism and controversy sparked by the setback against Scotland, the team had won matches against Oman and Papua New Guinea in the qualifiers.
The T20 World Cup history for Bangladesh remained unchanged they are yet to win a game in the main event.
“T20 is a short game and win is very important and I still back the decision. No matter where you play, you have to accept the fact but if you don’t accept it’s a different opinion. I would still repeat that those wins were important before coming to this tournament. We are such a team where the flow is very important and the fact is that we didn’t get the flow initially in the tournament we struggled throughout the tournament,” said Mahmudullah to the media in Dubai Thursday.
Bangladesh had decided to go into the T20 World Cup on a winning streak, rather than the experience of playing on sporting pitches, which they would have faced in Oman and the UAE.
“We had come to the tournament with the experience that if we had won one game, the momentum helped us win more. There was a consistency which we missed here. We might have had the momentum if we had won the game against Sri Lanka.” Riyad admitted that they have lacked awareness, which made their Twenty20 World Cup journey a miserable one.
“As professional cricketers, you have to adapt to all conditions. But we have lacked awareness as a unit, and we have to pick up on that.”
“When you have these sorts of performances, it is hard to say much. There are a lot of areas we have to look at, especially our batting. The wickets that we have played on have been among the best for batting,” Mahmudullah conceded.
“If you see, in the Super 12s, we came close to closing two games against Sri Lanka and West Indies. Other than that, we have been outplayed by the opposition. I hope the supporters keep supporting us.” Mahmudullah however stressed on the needs to figure out to what went wrong for Bangladesh in the good batting track.
“We have to figure out what went wrong when we go back to Bangladesh. T20 cricket you have to have a good power play, especially when we don’t have so-called hard hitters. You need that momentum to carry forward, but we haven't done that at all,” he concluded.