I thought that the Bangladesh team played very well and produced lots of very good cricket throughout this year’s ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
It would have been good for them to end on a high by beating Pakistan but it wasn’t to be. That’s okay though because the boys played very nicely all throughout the tournament.
Ultimately, they missed out on the semi-finals and it will take them a while to get closer to top teams like England, Australia and India but they’ve got four years to do it before the next World Cup, and I think that is enough time.
Bangladesh are playing good cricket but if they want to catch the big fish, there are still lots of things to do.
To beat those teams regularly, I think they need the middle order batsmen to start performing more consistently.
Shakib Al Hasan played really well when we were batting but if you see our middle order, they couldn’t always back him up. At the moment, a lot of them are young players though
I’m sure in the next World Cup, these boys will play like Shakib and score big regularly.
While we will improve, Australia, India and England will definitely improve too, so we’ll have to work a bit harder than them.
Our team is in very good shape at this moment, if they keep working hard then I’m sure they will do very good things.
It was very nice for Shakib to end with another half-century against Pakistan because he played amazingly throughout the whole World Cup.
It was just brilliant – he scored runs in each and every match, he picked up a few wickets and he was fantastic in the field as well.
To score two centuries and then five more 50s is absolutely incredible. He has always been a great all-rounder but in this tournament, he showed the world that he is the number one all-rounder.
There are so many players that did decent jobs for Bangladesh but what Shakib did was really special.
Mustafizur Rahman was another player who impressed me. In these conditions and at this time of year in England, it’s really, really difficult to take five wickets in an innings.
He did that twice in a row – against India and Pakistan – to finish the World Cup and he proved himself in each and every match.
He was a bit injured before the World Cup, he didn’t have enough time to recover fully but you wouldn’t be able to tell he had any issues.
Liton Das is another very good young player and he played well in his first World Cup. He didn’t make big runs in every game but he was fantastic against the West Indies especially, when he made an unbeaten 94.
He’s a young, upcoming player, so to be playing in such a big tournament will do him a world of good.
It’s very difficult for any player to perform in each and every game like Shakib did but he has a bright future.
If Bangladesh had qualified for the semi-finals it would have been a great thing but they should still be very, very happy because the boys did a really, really good job at the World Cup.
Courtesy: ICC
