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Bangladesh coach Chandika Hathurusinghe expressed his inability to address whether the absence of Tamim Iqbal is affecting the Tigers' underperforming top-order ahead of their World Cup match against India on Thursday.
Bangladesh's struggle in the batting department is quite evident as they continue to struggle to put up competitive scores against top teams in the World Cup. During the pre-match press conference, Hathurusinghe admitted that they "haven't put up complete batting performance, or to that matter, complete performance with the ball and bat so far." Under such circumstances, Tamim's absence from the squad once again takes away the spotlight as he has been one of the top batters for Bangladesh in the ODI and has amassed 8,357 runs in 243 ODI outings. Hathurusinghe was quizzed whether the team felt the absence of the experienced batter in the squad to which he replied, "He is not here, so I can't answer whether we are missing him or not. Unfortunately, he was not ready the time we were selecting. So obviously his record as a player is good, but the same thing is I don't know whether we are missing him or not, because we have players that here we have trusting that they will do a job for us." Last month, Tamim hit out at the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) after being dropped from the 50-over World Cup squad due to injury concerns. Shakib Al Hasan called Tamim "childish" and criticized him for putting himself ahead of the team's needs. Shakib spoke about Tamim without naming him and said that he is not a team man and just playing for individual records. "You are not thinking about the team at all. People don't understand these things. Why was the proposal given to him? It was for the team. What is wrong in that? You are a team man when you agree to such a proposal. Unless you are thinking along those lines, you are not a team man. You are playing for individual records, success, fame, and name. Not for the team," Shakib said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo. (ANI)
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