Tigers’ abysmal campaign

This T20 World Cup campaign will be remembered as one of Bangladesh cricket's catastrophes, report agencies.

Bangladesh endured defeat in all five of its Super 12s fixtures, after scraping through qualification in round 1 finishing second in a group with Scotland, Oman and Papua New Guinea.

The Tigers' dismal showing in all departments of the game left many observers surprised. Even Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah Riyad said he has no idea about what made them play like this.

A helpless skipper Mamudullah, often criticised throughout the tournament for his soft approach towards leadership and refusal to promote himself in the batting order, was hard pressed to explain such a campaign where they lost all their five Super-12 matches.

Grilled by a demanding media from his country, the skipper's refrain was that the team was still trying to find their feet in T20 format and the reasons behind such a disaster was as shocking to him as well.

An explanation which was not really tenable given the fact that a number of their leading cricketers like Shaikb Al Hasan, Mustafizur Rehman or senior opener Tamim Iqbal - who made himself unavailable for selection - had been plying their trade in franchise cricket for quite sometime.

A look at the Bangladesh batting card reflects the lack of application in building up a decent total to challenge the opposition.

Specially, they had a miserable batting performance in this World Cup. Bundled out for less than even 100 consecutively against both South Africa and Australia. What he possibly meant was not ideal for learning batting, particularly batting against all kinds of bowling.

Bangladesh continues to be found out against genuine pace and bounce for example, and top-order collapses were a routine occurrence during the T20 World Cup campaign.

Bangladesh's poor catching in 2021 has literally caught up with them in the ongoing T20 World Cup. They dropped 11 catches and missed a stumping too.

An inexplicable batting performance from a team which had been playing international cricket for a long time and had been a full Test playing nation for over last two decades.

They have had the odd moments of glory like a quarter final finish in the 2015 ICC World Cup in England or a close runners-up finish in the continental Asia Cup, but a decent white ball title still continues to elude them.

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 materialised.

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.

Mahmudullah's captaincy also came under scrutiny. According to many, he failed to lead the team from the front. But Mahmudullah said he tried his best to keep the team together and play their best cricket.

"It's (stepping down as captain) not in my hands. Maybe there was some deficit in my captaincy. But I tried my best to lead the team, and bring out the best of the boys. Now up to the board. They will decide about it," Mahmudullah added.

Mahmudullah scored 169 runs in eight matches with a fifty. He was the second-highest runs scorer for Bangladesh in the campaign after opener Mohammad Naim, who posted 174 in seven matches.

BCB president Nazmul Hasan had come down heavily on the team after their opening defeat to Scotland in the Qualifiers. Nazmul's outburst seemed to have an impact on the dressing room atmosphere and skipper Mahmudullah didn't hold back his emotions after they secured their berth in the Super 12s, stating that it was unfair to raise questions over the players' commitment.