We have lacked awareness as a unit: Mahmudullah

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Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah Riyad admitted that they have lacked awareness, which made their Twenty20 World Cup journey a miserable one, reports BSS.

“As professional cricketers, you have to adapt to all conditions. But we have lacked awareness as a unit, and we have to pick up on that,” Mahmudullah said after their crushing eight-wicket defeat to Australia in their last match of the Super 12 phase on Thursday at Dubai, UAE.

The Tigers saw their World Cup hopes being crushed after coming here with big dream. Prior to the World Cup, they won three series-a 2-1 win over Zimbabwe at away and a 4-1 and 3-2 victory over Australia and New Zealand respectively at home.

Even though their maiden series victory over Australia and New Zealand in T20 format was questionable due to the quality of the home pitch, Bangladesh believed that the winning confidence would give them edge in the big stage of World Cup. But that turned out to be false hope as they faltered even in the good batting track.

Bangladesh had disastrous start to the tournament as they conceded a shocking defeat to Scotland in the qualifying round. However they regrouped well to beat Oman and Papua New Guinea to make it to the Super 12.

In the main round of the World Cup, they had only one victory, which came against West Indies in the inaugural edition of T20 World Cup in 2007. There was hope that they would break defeat-jinx but that dream was never materialized.

The Tigers started the Super 12 with a five-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka, then lost to England by eight wickets, tasted a heartbreaking 3-run defeat to West Indies before being humbled by South Africa and Australia by six and eight wickets respectively after being bowled out for 84 and 73 runs correspondingly.

“When you have these sorts of performances, it is hard to say much. There are a lot of areas we have to look at, especially our batting. The wickets that we have played on have been among the best for batting,” Mahmudullah conceded.

“If you see, in the Super 12s, we came close to closing two games against Sri Lanka and West Indies. Other than that, we have been outplayed by the opposition. I hope the supporters keep supporting us.” Mahmudullah however stressed on the needs to figure out to what went wrong for Bangladesh in the good batting track.

“We have to figure out what went wrong when we go back to Bangladesh. T20 cricket you have to have a good powerplay, especially when we don’t have so-called hard hitters. You need that momentum to carry forward, but we haven’t done that at all,” he concluded.