KOLKATA: Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan said his team’s 87-run loss to the Netherlands in Kolkata on Saturday was their worst-ever World Cup performance.
After starting the tournament with a win against Afghanistan, Bangladesh slumped to a fifth successive defeat against the Dutch.
“I don’t have an answer,” said a visibly upset Shakib. “You can say that this is our worst, without any doubt. I don’t have an answer to why we played this way.”
Bangladesh had the Netherlands in trouble at 63-4 but paid the price for dropping skipper Scott Edwards twice in three balls when he was on nought. Edwards went on to finish as top scorer with 68.
Chasing a modest 230-run target, Bangladesh folded for just 142 in 42.2 overs against some accurate Dutch bowling led by Paul van Meekeren (4-23) and Bas de Leede (2-25).
Bangladesh are ninth in the 10-team table with games remaining against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia.
“I don’t want to blame anyone. We are a better team than our performance. We were disappointing in this tournament, something that the whole dressing room would agree,” said Shakib.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he added. “As a batting unit, if you ask me to summarise our six matches with the bat. We were very poor other than Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim.”
Mahmudullah hit a century in a lost cause against South Africa in Mumbai while Mushfiqur has scored two fifties in the tournament.
Shakib has been a shadow of himself, managing just 65 runs in five matches after notching 606 runs in the 2019 World Cup.
“All other batters were not up to the mark. I thought we were well short of confidence in both batting and bowling,” said Shakib.
“We couldn’t meet up with our high expectations. I thought we bowled really well after losing the toss but we were sloppy in the field.”
“We are not comfortable facing bowlers in certain times, so we have to adjust all the time. If our batters did well at the top, Riyad and Mushfiq could have performed their roles,” he added.
