Tigers take on West Indies for elusive victory

PBC News:  In a bid to hit back into the winning way following a disappointing loss in the first two matches, Bangladesh will take on reigning champions West Indies tomorrow (Friday) in their third game of the Super 12 phase of Twenty20 World Cup at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium.

The match which starts at 4 PM (Bangladesh Standard Time) will be aired live on Gazi TV and T Sports. Bangladesh earlier tasted a five-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka in the opening game of Super 12 before being humiliated by England by eight wickets. A defeat at the hands of West Indies would ruin their hope to seal the semifinal hope, BSS reports.

What would motivate Bangladesh in the game is that their only victory apart from the qualifying round in the T20 World Cup came against West Indies in 2007. Since then they failed to register any victory in the elite round of the cricket’s third biggest extravaganza.

There was high hope that they could break the jinx this time around after winning three series, including two against Australia and New Zealand at home before the World Cup.

In the qualifying round, though they lost to Scotland, they recovered from that in style and beat Oman and Papua New Guinea convincingly. But they lost the momentum again in the Super 12.

Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah Riyad stressed on reassessing the batting plan after the defeat to England in the second match in which they got a good batting wicket but still posted a below part 124-9. England raced to the victory with plenty balls remaining.

“Definitely, we were disappointed with the batting, it was a good wicket but we didn’t start well and didn’t have any partnerships in the middle
either,” Mahmudullah said.

“We’ve been lacking a good start, on these wickets it gets difficult later on. We are more skilled hitters than power hitters, we don’t want to
change that because we believe we can post good totals. (But) we need to reassess and come up with a good plan,” he added.

West Indies also lost their first two matches to England and South Africa and are in danger to be sidelined from the tournament like Bangladesh before the semifinal. Despite being boasted with a good number of power-hitters, the defending champions were shot out for 55 runs against England and could put up just 143-8 against South Africa.

While Bangladesh have the problem of inconsistency, West Indies looked out-of-sort and jaded. Experts believe this could be Bangladesh’s best chance to beat the Caribbean.

Stat also suggested Bangladesh had better success rate against West Indies than any other top teams in this format. They have played 12 matches against the Caribbean side and won five, in contrast of losing six. The other match was called off.

The Tigers’ stat in T20 cricket is not up to the mark. They so far played 117 matches and won 43. They had lost a staggering number of 72
matches while two matches fetched no result.

They so far played 29 matches in the World Cup of this shortest version of cricket and won just seven-six of which came in the qualifying round.

Squad:

Mahmudullah Riyad (Captain), Naim Sheikh, Soumya Sarkar, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Afif Hossain, Nurul Hasan Sohan, Shak Mahedi Hasan, Nasum Ahmed, Mustafizur Rahman, Shoriful Islam, Taskin Ahmed, Rubel Hossain, Shamim Patwari, Rubel Hossain.