Bangladesh captain Liton Das said they will contemplate what went wrong and come back strong after the chastening two-wicket loss to unfancied United Arab Emirates in the second and penultimate Twenty20 International at Sharjah Monday.
In pursuit of a steep 206 for their first ever victory against the Tigers in any format, the Emiratis reached the destination with two balls to spare thanks to some comedy of errors by the Bangladesh fielders, and expensive bowling by Tanzim Hasan Sakib and Nahid Rana.
Nahid leaked 12.5 runs per over for his 2/50 while Tanzim bled 14.34 for his 1/55 as UAE captain Muhammad Waseem engineered their chase with a brilliant 42-ball 82, studded with nine fours and five sixes.
Also contributing to Bangladesh’s stunning loss was shoddy fielding by the likes of Shoriful Islam and Towhid Hridoy.
With the proceedings locked at 1-1, the bare minimum now for the men in red and green is to clinch the series in Wednesday’s third and final T20I and avoid further embarrassment.
“You can have good days and bad days. We will sit and talk and come back,” said Liton during the presentation ceremony Monday.
“Any loss is hard, but we still batted well on this wicket. Wicket was pretty good, when they batted, they had the favour of dew. We missed a bit in the fielding and in the middle-overs bowling. When you play on this type of ground, which is small and with dew a factor, you have to calculate and plan. What Rana did before, we were expecting more from him.”
As for the home side, they will be eyeing a historic series triumph against the Test-playing nation as UAE skipper Waseem said, “We will go with our strength and hopefully we can make it 2-1. I have no words. I am very happy we beat Bangladesh. Very happy with the performance.
“I was giving hope to everyone that we can chase this score because we know the conditions. We were hoping to chase it and I tried to play my natural game. Nothing special, but we just went with the game-plan. We were hoping and had belief. Thankfully, we won.”
