ICC U19 Cricket World Cup, Australia 2012
‘Could have been better’
Bangladesh Under-19s captain Anamul Haque felt that his side could have done a lot better than the seventh-place finish in the U-19 World Cup had his bowlers bowled
anything close to their potential.
Bangladesh finished seventh defeating Pakistan by five wickets in the play-off match on Friday to add to their creditable win against Sri Lanka and a comfortable
victory over Namibia in the group stage.
However, Bangladesh lost to Australia in a close quarterfinal and also against South Africa (in the group stage) and England (in the fifth-place play-off match), which
Anamul felt were due to a bad performance from the bowlers.
“We always expect good things from the spinners. But they let us down. Even the pace bowlers were not effective. Had the bowlers bowled well, we might have been in the
final,” said Anamul after the team’s arrival from Australia yesterday.
The young skipper, who topped the runscorers’ chart with 365 runs including two centuries and a half century at an average of 60, felt that things could have been much
better with more help from the bowlers.
The team’s head coach Sarwar Imran, a former bowling coach of the national side, felt the spinners were helpless in those conditions and the pace bowling attack was
weak compared to the other teams. The middle order too did not do well, Sarwar thought.
“Our bowling was weak compared to other sides and middle-order’s batting did not help much either. But overall performance was not bad. Anamul was brilliant with the
bat in the tournament, and so was the opener Liton Das (262 runs).This team has a good future.”
Meanwhile, two of the spinners — Al Amin and Nayeem Islam were reported by the umpires for suspect bowling actions and did not return with the team as they were to
undergo tests to ascertain whether their bowling action is legal. Sarwar said that it was part of a new campaign by the ICC to report any suspect action during
tournaments and that the two bowlers will not be found to have illegal action.
“They are not the only two bowlers who have been reported. Players from other teams have been reported as well. I don’t think they will be found with an illegal
bowling action (bending the elbow more than 15 degrees).”
The two spinners are expected to return today along with the assistant coach.
-With The Daily Star input
