The four-wicket win against UAE yesterday hardly explains the uneasiness the Bangladesh side went through during the course of the warm-up match at Fatullah. Chasing the modest 143 at one point Bangladesh were looking to concede the game to the associate member’s and Tamim Iqbal who returned to the side recovering from a neck strain said poor start caused them the discomfort.
“It would have been much better if we had a good start with the ball. And I think we can bowl much better especially in the first six overs, but we made a good comeback at the end where at one stage they were looking to score 160-170 but we managed to restrict them to 140 odd runs.
“Same goes to the batting where we tried to be more attacking from the start. We will try to improve these things on our next match. Though T20 looks a fast game but there is still some time to think and I hope we will sit and discuss to improve in the next match,” said Tamim at the post match briefing session. Bangladesh seemed to be in a relaxed mode yesterday but Tamim informed they are not in a position to take their opponents lightly. “Look we are not in a position to take any side lightly as we lost seven matches in a row recently and we are taking every match seriously and we are trying to work out on our mistakes and don’t repeat our mistakes and return to a better position where we earlier were,” he said. The shot selection cost most of the batters and when asked if they were finding it difficult to adjust to the format Tami said, “No I think every player knows his duty, maybe we are passing a bad time as a team and you can’t solve everything together and I am sure it will improve as we won the match today and gained confidence for the important match on March 16.
“But we will be looking to attack in the first six overs and we have given the license to our top order batsmen because as you know we don’t have such big hitters like (Keiron) Pollard so the first six overs are always important for us,” said Tamim before adding that he is fully fit now and expects to be available for the coming matches.
On the other hand, UAE skipper Khurram Khan, who was also the highest scorer for his side with 44 runs, was happy with his team’s performance. “I think it’s a wonderful performance to be honest as you know Bangladesh is an experienced side and they are in the international cricket for long time. Taking them almost to the last over was a huge achievement for us and we have a lot of positives from this game,” he said.