Ashraful blames poor batting for T20 WC exit

Bangladesh skipper Mohammad Ashraful is blaming his batsmen for failing to rise to the occasion which saw his team crash out of the ongoing World T20 after suffering consecutive defeats.

''Basically, we lost due to batting failures. We decided to score 60 runs in the first six overs and that was the strategy for this tournament and in order to do that the top three of our batting line up would go after the bowling. We nearly achieved that target but at the same time lost wickets at a regular interval,'' Ashraful said.

''On top of that, if you cannot continuously score against a team like India, you are in for trouble,'' he added.

Talking about the defeat to India in their opening match, 24-year-old right-hander asserted that his team was not under any pressure and was looking to repeat their upset victory during the ODI World Cup in 2007.

''We have always done a good job against India. Infact, India lost the plot against us in the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup. We take pride in the fact that India could not qualify for the next stage, thanks to us. We used that victory as a pep-deck in our team meeting in this tournament. So there was no additional pressure when we went to play against India,'' he told cricinfo.com.

However, Ashraful rues the lack of international experience in Bangladesh ranks, which he feels could prove to be an impediment.

''We play lesser number of games than other teams so we lack experience. I am sure you will agree that experience plays a major role in the international circuit. We will try to minimise the number of mistakes that we made in this tournament,'' he felt.

-- (UNI) -- 09SPD20.xml

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