Bangladesh’s batting is a “concern”, captain Mahmudullah has said after their stunning six-run defeat to non Test-playing side Scotland in their opening match of the T20 World Cup. Bangladesh fell while chasing a target of 141, ending their innings on 134/7.
“I am very much frustrated,” Mahmudullah said. “Our batting is a concern. We have to bat better. We have to play aggressive cricket, regardless of the situation. We have a deep batting line-up, with Mohammad Saifuddin at No. 9. We may need to think over some changes tomorrow.”
Mahmudullah, Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim, who are three of the seniormost batsmen in the side, all struggled to score quickly. While Mahmudullah (23 off 22 balls) and Mushfiqur (38 off 36 balls) had strike rates of just above 100, Shakib (20 off 28 balls) scored at a strike rate of 71.43.
“We didn’t deliberately bat slowly. We couldn’t hit those boundaries. We have to bat better next time. A lot of things will come up since we lost the game. I think we didn’t play well today, but we are a good T20 team. We have the capability. When we play our best cricket, we can win games,” said Mahmudullah.
“We couldn’t make runs in the Powerplay. You need to start well chasing 140. I think Mushfiqur (Rahim) and Shakib (Al Hasan) made some recovery but in the middle (overs), we didn’t bat well even though it was on a good wicket. We made more mistakes.
“I think some big overs off the spinners would have raised our run rate, but probably losing wickets in the middle overs prevented us from getting those big overs. The asking run-rate, as a result, went up,” said the 35-year-old.
Bangladesh failed to make it directly into the Super 10 stage due to their low ranking and will next face Oman on Tuesday.
