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Vice-captain Taskin Ahmed opened up about their woes with the bat that contributed to Bangladesh's exit from the T20 World Cup in the Super 8.
Despite losing their two games in the Super 8, Bangladesh still had the opportunity to qualify for the semi-final. In their final Super 8 game, Bangladesh needed to chase down the 116 in 12.1 overs to qualify for the semi-final, while Australia would have secured a spot alongside India if Bangladesh failed to achieve it and only secured a win against Afghanistan. But their batting woes once again hindered them from reaching the final four. Bangladesh batters found it hard to negate the threat of Rashid Khan and Naveen-ul-Haq. Among the Super Eight teams, Bangladesh's batting unit had the lowest collective average. "The seniors' off-form had an effect on the team but not off the field. They are great teammen. We stayed as a team for 47 days. Everything was fine off the field. It is quite normal that a team will have problems when important players are not in form. I am hopeful that we can recover from this, and play better soon," Taskin told reporters at the Dhaka airport, as quoted from ESPNcricinfo. Their top three batters struggled to provide them with a positive start in their three Super 8 matches. Litton Das was the only batter to score a sole fifty in the Super 8. Towhid Hridoy's 153 runs at a strike rate of 128.57 stood out but didn't get any support. Taskin felt that their batters found it easier to play on the West Indies surface than the tricky pitches of the USA, but still, their slump didn't stop. "When you talk about the batting, if you look at the statistics, I think every [teams'] batting department suffered in the USA this time. Bowlers got a lot of help. We got better [batting] wickets in the West Indies," he added. "I haven't seen such a long bad patch for the batters in my ten years playing for Bangladesh. I hope it goes away quickly. We never had great numbers in T20s. We are improving slowly. We cannot just look at minus points; we are in the negative already. We are trying to get a 'plus'. Your frustration was expected. We will give you a good win. You have to keep faith in us. We will give it our best," Taskin stated. Taskin felt that they could have done better, especially in their last Super 8 game against Afghanistan. They had to chase down a paltry target of 116 in 12.1 overs to qualify for the final four. "We could have done a lot better. We were all quite disappointed with the last match. We tried to win it in 12 overs, but when we realised it wasn't possible, we tried to win the game. We still couldn't win," he said. "There are positives from the campaign. Our bowlers did very well throughout the tournament. We qualified to the Super Eight. We won three matches in the T20 World Cup for the first time. So there are positives, but there are negatives too. We are disappointed, like the rest of you. We didn't play up to expectations," he concluded. (ANI)
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