The West Indies legend Clive Lloyd said Bangladesh consist of good players and that as a Test-playing nation they should have performed better in the ongoing Twenty20 World Cup.
Lloyd is regarded as one of the greatest players and captains of all time as, under his captaincy, the Windies won the first two Cricket World Cups in 1975 and 1979.
Lloyd talked with the media personnel in ICC’s media hub in Barbados where South Africa will face India in the final Saturday.
Bangladesh won three games out of four in the group stage to qualify for the Super Eight phase but lost all their next three against Australia, India and Afghanistan.
Bangladesh had a golden chance to earn a semi-final spot when they had to score 116 runs in 12.1 overs against the Afghans at Arnos Vale Stadium in Saint Vincent but bottled the opportunity and also lost the match by eight runs to end their campaign on a disappointing note.
While talking about Bangladesh’s performance, Lloyd said people expect the Tigers to perform better than this as a Test-playing nation.
“They (Bangladesh) have made great strides in the last few years but they have not performed too well in the competition. I think they do have some good players. It’s quite obvious they will be disappointed in the way they have performed. They are a Test-playing nation and people expect them to do much better than they have performed in this tournament,” Lloyd said.
The ongoing T20 World Cup being played in the USA and the Caribbean has not produced plenty of runs which is a common entertaining factor of T20 cricket.
Lloyd admitted low scores in this edition of the tournament was a disappointing sight as fans expect runs in this format.
“I think I was disappointed with the scores. We expected teams to score 160s or more with the nature of the wickets we have here. There were not a lot of big scores in this T20 World Cup,” he said.
Since retiring as a player, Lloyd has remained heavily involved in cricket. He managed the West Indies team in the late 1990s.
Later he was also involved in commentating.
He was an International Cricket Council match referee from 2001 to 2006. Lloyd was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame In 2009.
