Sakib al Hasan perhaps never expected to come to a press conference so early on a day that he started so perfectly after calling the coin correctly against West Indies on Friday.
But the game was over in a flash, even before many of the fans could realise what had happened, forcing Sakib to walk into the conference room to give the details of something that was very hard to explain.
He said nothing more than what was expected of him after Bangladesh were all out for their lowest ever total of 58 runs. But it was not very difficult to guess what was going on in his mind.
Booed by some fans who adored him and his fellow team-mates so much even a week ago, Sakib was as dejected as anyone would have been in such a situation and it was enough to describe his pain.
‘I think it’s a combination of both,’ Sakib said when he was asked if West Indies bowled exceptionally well or Bangladesh did not have their application right with the bat.
‘They bowled in right areas but we should have batted well, I just don’t know just what went wrong. We have to sit down and think about it,’ said Sakib, who felt very sorry for the fans.
‘They (the fans) never expected us to play that badly and we also did not expect us to play so badly with the bat. It was not just our day,’ said Sakib.
It was a game that offered Bangladesh so much hope, especially after Bangladesh’s recent success which saw them leapfrogging the West Indians in the latest official one-day rankings.
Right from the draw of the tournament, Bangladesh had targeted three teams – West Indies, Ireland and Netherlands – which they thought would give them a great chance to qualify for the quarter-finals.
They conquered Ireland last week and were expecting to make West Indies their second victim before going to Chittagong to face struggling England and minnows Netherlands.
But when it was time for them to deliver the Tigers capitulated in a manner that was not imaginable even an hour before the game started.
Sakib, however, said the expectation and pressure to win the game had nothing to do with their inexplicable batting debacle which led them to suffer a nine-wicket thrashing.
‘I think there are some pressures on us always and we all know how to handle it. It was just not our day,’ said Sakib.
‘The way we have been performing for the last 12 months we were always expecting to win against the big teams, especially at home, but we just could not play good cricket.
‘The plan today [Friday] was to bat first, put up a decent total around 230 to 240 runs.
‘I thought that would be a very good total on that wicket but we did not bat well,’ he said.
Sakib, however, said this just is not the end of the world and Bangladesh can still qualify for the quarter-finals after this morale-shattering defeat.
‘After losing this match it will be tough to come back strongly,’ said Sakib.
‘I don’t know how we will come back from this defeat,’ said Sakib. ‘But we all know what we are capable of.
‘We still have a very good chance as we have to win two out of the remaining three matches,’ he said.
Lowest World Cup totals
(team, score, overs, opposition, venue, date)
Canada 36 18.4 v Sri Lanka Paarl 19 Feb 2003
Canada 45 40.3 v England Manchester 13 Jun 1979
Namibia 45 14.0 v Australia Potchefstroom 27 Feb 2003
Bangladesh 58 18.5 v West Indies Dhaka 04 Mar 2011
Scotland 68 31.3 v West Indies Leicester 27 May 1999
Kenya 69 23.5 v New Zealand Chennai 20 Feb 2011
Pakistan 74 40.2 v England Adelaide 01 Mar 1992
Ireland 77 27.4 v Sri Lanka Port Elizabeth 18 Apr 2007
Bermuda 78 24.4 v Sri Lanka Port of Spain 15 Mar 2007
Namibia 84 17.4 v Pakistan Kimberley 16 Feb 2003
Courtesy of New Age
