After squandering a golden chance to be the first overseas team to beat India in three-match T20 series on Indian soil, Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah Riyad had no reservation to admit that his side still has a long way to go if they are to be proper force in shortest format of the cricket.
In third match, what turned out to be series deciding game, following a 1-1 result, Bangladesh was nicely placed at 110-2 in 13th over, chasing a target of 175 to win but the visitors lost the rest of the eight wickets for just 34 runs to be bowled out for 144 and thereby lost the match by 30 runs to concede the series.
Deepak Chahar recorded the best bowling figure in T20 International cricket as he claimed 6-7 including a hat-trick to help the host clinch the series. While Chahar varied the pace extremely well in a pitch where dew played a role to favour the batsmen, Bangladeshi batters put up a mindless batting to dig their own graveyards.
Bangladesh lost close matches against India in T20 formats on quite a few occasions as they failed to hold their nerves when it matters most. And that’s the fact that forced them to taste their third loss after being comfortably placed like the way they did in the Nidhas Trophy final and ICC World T20 tournament in Bangalore in 2016.
”If I have to say about T20 format, we have a long way to go,” Mahmudullah told reporters after the disappointing loss at the hand of the host at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur on Sunday.
”We have to find out a lot of things. We don’t have big hitters. We have to be dependent on our skill hitting specially as batting group. Our game sense needs to improve and we need to become more consistent mentally. So as a batting unit if we can improve then we will have more chances to win,” he said.
Mahmudullah also said that big team learn from their past mistakes and don’t repeat the mistakes in the next match. According to him, it’s the area where they lacked as they are doing mistakes repeatedly, which means they don’t learn from their past mistakes.
”I am not sure whether it was composer or not. But if you see, we did similar kind of mistakes probably in few games in recent times. That’s where I think big teams are quite good in like very consistent on these matters so that they can chase down this sort of total,” he concluded.
