‘We were almost there’ – Shakib Al Hasan dejected after losing another close fixture against India in 20-20 World Cup
India and Bangladesh treated the fans to an edge-of-a-seat thriller in the 20-20 World Cup at the Adelaide Oval on Wednesday. The ‘Men-in-Blue’ managed to beat the Bangla Tigers by five runs in the thrilling Super-12 encounter as they took another step towards a semi-final berth.
Bangladesh fought till the very last ball of the game but eventually fell 5 runs short of India’s total of 184. After the match ended, Bangladesh captain Shakib-al-Hasan said that his team has now made a habit of coming close and losing matches against India.
Shakib stated that they always end up coming close to victory but fail to cross the line.
“It’s been the story when we play against India, we are almost there but we don’t finish the line. Both teams enjoyed it, it was a great game and that’s what we wanted. At the end someone has to win and someone has to lose. He’s [Litton Das] our best batter going around,” said Shakib-al-Hasan.
Shakib further said that the team was confident of chasing down the target after the blazing start given by Litton Das. He also revealed the reason behind bowling out Taskin Ahmed in the early phase of the innings.
“The way he batted in the powerplay gave us a lot of momentum and gave us the belief that we could chase this with the short boundaries here. If you look at India’s top four, they are very dangerous. Our plan was to get those 4 and that’s why we bowled Taskin through. Unfortunately, he did not pick wickets but he was very economical. Not much, we have been very relaxed and not talking too much about cricket in this World Cup. We have one more match to go and we want to concentrate on that,” the Bangladesh captain added.
As a result of this victory, India have climbed to the top of the Group 2 table with 6 points in 4 matches. South Africa, meanwhile, slid down a position having played a game less. Elsewhere, Bangladesh’s position remains unchanged at third. The Shakib Al Hasan-led side still have a faint shot at a semi-final spot, given South Africa’s next match is washed out and Bangladesh win their next fixture with a huge margin.
India, on the other hand, have almost claimed a semi-final spot and will next play against Zimbabwe on Sunday.
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