Bangladesh team director calls defeat to Zimbabwe "a disgrace"

Zimbabwe, in a first, defeated Bangladesh in a bilateral T20I series where they registered a 2-1 victory in a 3-match series. There were superb performances from both the teams but the home team held their nerve to pocket the series quite comfortably.

Image Credits: Cricfrenzy

For the record, Zimbabwe won the first T20I by 17 runs before Bangladesh made a comeback in the second T20I to level the series with a 7-wicket victory. It all went down to the third and final T20I in which Bangladesh had the home team under control until 13 overs in which Zimbabwe scored just 67 runs losing 6 top-order wickets!

And then, Ryan Burl (54 off 28) and Luck Jongwe (35* off 20) stepped up scoring at a fast rate to help post a competitive total of 156 on the board. The 15th over in which Ryan Burl scored 34 runs was the highlight of the match! Bangladesh fell short of the target by 10 runs and lost the 3-match series by 2-1.

Though the Bangladesh side did not have experienced players in their squad, the defeat did not go well with the team director who called this defeat a disgrace to them! These are the comments from him as quoted by ESPN Cricinfo.

"I am very disappointed, I didn't expect to lose to Zimbabwe. We are a better team than them. I would call it a disgrace. I won't give any excuses. We should have won the T20I series. Losing was quite unusual," said Khaled Mahmud, Bangladesh team director.

"When we needed 10 or 12 runs an over, we were getting six or seven every over. Nobody even tried to hit a six. Everyone was playing for ones and twos. What was that? They batted like trying to protect their place, make enough runs so that they don't lose their place," added Mahmud.

"When you are chasing 157, you can't win a game by batting at 90 or 110 strike rate. Someone had to go after the bowling. Look at their strike-rate. They changed the complexion of the game. You can't expect Litton Das to score every day. Whether it was Afif or Shanto, I didn't see anyone batting aggressively. If you can't pull a short ball for six, that's going to be a problem," said Mahmud referring to Bangladesh batters' poor strike rate in the third T20I.

"The cricketers can tell you what they have to do. They have been getting opportunities for quite some time now. There's not a lot of competition for places, so they should play with an open heart. I haven't seen them playing that way," added Mahmud.