Bangladesh vice-captain Taskin Ahmed admitted on Friday that the poor form of senior campaigners Shakib al Hasan and Mahmudullah had an impact on the team’s performance during their recently-concluded campaign of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
Led by the poor performances of the batting unit, Bangladesh’s campaign came to a halt in the Super 8s of the World Cup, the round in which they lost all their three games. Shakib managed to score 111 runs at a strike rate of 106.73 in the World Cup while Mahmudullah made only 95 runs at a strike rate of 94.05.
“The seniors (Shakib and Mahmudullah) off-form had an effect on the team (on the field) but not off the field. They are great team men and we stayed as a team for 47 days while everything was fine off the field,” Taskin told reporters at the Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport on Friday.
“It is quite normal that a team will have problems when important players (Shakib and Mahmudullah) are not in form,” he said “I am hopeful that we can recover from this and play better soon.
“I haven’t seen such a long bad patch for the batters in my ten years playing for Bangladesh. I hope it goes away quickly. We never had great numbers in T20s. We are improving slowly. We cannot just look at the negative points; we are in the negative already. We are trying to get a ‘plus’. We will give you a good win. You have to keep faith in us. We will give it our best,” he added.
Taskin said that they were always on the hunt for a place in the semi-final when they were chasing 115 runs in 12.1 overs to get past Afghanistan and move to the last four with a better run rate but added that he was disappointed to lose the game.
“We could have done a lot better. We were all quite disappointed with the last match (against Afghanistan) and we tried to win it in 12 overs but when we realized it wasn’t possible, we tried to win the game. We still couldn’t win,” the right-arm pacer said.
Taskin praised leg spinner Rishad Hossain and pacer Tanzim Shakib for their noteworthy performances in the tournament. Rishad picked 14 wickets to finish as the joint third-highest wicket-taker by the end of the Super 8s, while Tanzim picked 11 wickets and gave the team vital breakthroughs on numerous occasions.
“Tanzim and Rishad are among the tournament’s top wicket-takers. It is a positive. We have some future stars emerging from Bangladesh. It says that we have ability,” said Taskin. “The bowling unit has been doing well for the last few years. We have been consistent. It will keep getting better. What has taken place has hurt us and the fans, especially our inability to win certain matches,” he concluded.
