When Brendan Mc Cullum plays to his best, there are hardly any teams in the world who can come up with an answer and Bangladesh could
not be any exception in their first match in the ICC World Twenty20 on Friday.
The Tigers had no clue how to stop McCullum, the top-ranked player in Twenty20 format, who chose the game to show his class once again and scored a record 123 off 58 balls to set up a crushing 59-run win for New Zealand.
Bangladesh skipper Mushfiqur Rahim admitted they could do nothing after McCullum launched a counter-attack against their bowlers which took the game beyond their reach.
New Zealand ended their 20 overs with 191-3 after McCullum’s century (123), the highest in Twenty20 cricket and second by the batsman, a feat achieved by no other cricketer.
‘I have told you earlier New Zealand have so many match-winners like us. When one or two of them play very well it makes the job always difficult for the opponents. And McCullum did exactly that and we had no answer,’ said Mushfiq.
‘It shows his class and why he is regarded as the top batsman in Twenty20 cricket. He took the game away from us as New Zealand made 191 runs. If the target was 160 to 165 runs I think we could give a fight.’
Mushfiq defended his decision to bowl after winning the toss and said it had nothing to do with their poor show in the game that they were expecting to win.
‘As I said earlier we were expecting a target of 160 to 170 runs. We thought it would be difficult for our spinners to bowl in the second half of the game, so we decided to chase,’ said Mushfiq.
‘It was not the decision which was wrong. Rather what we did after deciding to bowl that was wrong. We could not bowl according to our plan and our fielding did not help us either,’ he said.
Mushfiq brushed aside the suggestion that they took some unnecessary pressure on them by targeting particularly New Zealand in the group game as the players appeared nervous on a few occasions.
Bangladesh started the game well and reined in the batsmen in the first six overs of Powerplay when New Zealand could score only 34-1, but a couple of misfielding took the momentum away from them.
McCullum seized the opportunity and smashed his half-century off 29 balls and the rest was history.
‘It’s not that we were nervous, rather everybody was focussed. But the way McCullum launched a counter-attack we could do nothing about it,’ said Mushfiq.
‘Still we thought about a chase. The plan was that we will take our chance in the first six overs and will see what happens. But once we lost too many wickets in the period it went beyond our reach.’
-With New Age input
