After Bangladesh’s humiliating loss to England, Taskin
Ahmed’s expression at the media scrum revealed how the day had gone for his
squad.
The question was extremely simple since it was Taskin:
why did the fast bowlers bowl so poorly?
To put things in context, Bangladesh had also received
the ball conventionally when they faced Afghanistan in their World Cup debut,
but they successfully mounted a comeback. In this instance, England reached 100
in the sixteenth over, 200 in the third, and 298 by the end of the forty. The
three wickets taken by Shoriful Islam did help to slow England’s run rate in
the final 10 overs, but a large score was inevitable.
Although Bangladesh has frequently handed up large
totals, their improved pace-bowling unit had raised hopes that were now
unfounded. They achieved the second-best aggregate bowling average among the
World Cup-playing teams in the four years between the World Cups in 2019 and
2023. As a result, there was a great deal of expectation.
Taskin, who is regarded as the pace attack’s leader,
is pleased with that accomplishment. As questions came in, Taskin snapped when
one was directed at the pacers’ performance in this match before responding to
further inquiries by adding, “We didn’t bowl well.”
“If you consider the performance of two matches
as haphazard after two years of achievement, it is a failure. We will try to do
well in the future,” he said to one. “That’s what I have been telling
you. There’s no point in giving an excuse. We couldn’t bowl well.” The
frustration in his voice was palpable.
“We have to be more accurate. Different batters
have different types of weaknesses – we have to make them play more good
balls,” he said. “Sometimes we will concede runs but we have to bowl
more good balls. We have to execute these plans accordingly. We will do well if
we can bowl out oppositions for low totals.
“We didn’t bowl according to the expectations [in
this game], although we were playing in mostly batting-friendly conditions.
There was enough room for us to do well. We started badly, but Shoriful and
Mahedi [Hasan] came back well.”