BANGLADESH captain Shakib Al Hasan was confident his team will bounce back after the heart-breaking loss to India in the World Cup opener, but urged the bowlers to shape up.
The hosts lost Saturday (February 19)’s high-scoring match by 87 runs, disappointing millions of local fans who had hoped for a repeat of the win over India in the 2007 edition in the Caribbean.
India piled up 370-4, the fifth highest World Cup total, after being sent in to bat by Shakib with Virender Sehwag smashing 175 off 140 balls and young Virat Kohli making 100 not out in his maiden Cup appearance.
Bangladesh made a spirited chase of the daunting target under lights, reaching 283-9 as opener Tamim Iqbal scored 70 and Shakib contributed 55 off 50 balls in the group B match.
Shakib blamed his bowlers for allowing India to run riot with the bat, but justified his decision to give the power-packed rivals first strike at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium.
“I thought we had a better chance of winnning the game by chasing,” he said. “If we could have had early wickets, it would have been a different game. That was our plan.
“But our fast bowlers could not execute those plans. That was our main problem and I thought that cost us the game.
“We could have bowled better. We bowled too many boundary balls. On the other hand, Sehwag played a really good innings and he took the game away from us.”
Seamer Shafiul Islam went for 69 runs in his seven overs, including 12 runs in the first over of the tournament. New-ball partner Rubel Hossain went wicketless in 10 overs that cost 60 runs.
Shakib urged fans to keep faith in the team, saying there were a lot of positives to take away from the opener ahead of the second match against Ireland at the same venue next Friday (February 25).
“Our aim was to bat properly, play cricketing shots. We knew the wicket was good, and if one of Tamim and Junaid (Siddique) had kept going, we could have got a very good total,” he said.
“I thought we executed our batting very well. We didn’t try to hit too many slogs and got close to 300. We batted really well and sensibly.”
Shakib admitted the absence of pace spearhead Mashrafe Mortaza, who was ruled out of the tournament due to a knee injury, may have had a bearing on the result.
