Bangladesh Plan A (sarcastically) - “No excuses,” says Taskin shakily - Gudstory

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It was Taskin, so the line of questioning was quite clear: Why were the fast bowlers performing so poorly?

Taskin, usually friendly, was gloomy from the start. And then, facing the bombardment of questions, he looked shaken.

To put things in perspective, Bangladesh usually started with the ball against Afghanistan in their World Cup opener as well, but they came back well in that match. Here, England had 100 in the 16th over, 200 in the 33rd over, and 298 by the end of the 40th over. Shoryful Islam’s three wickets brought England’s run rate down a bit in the last ten overs, but they were always going to get a big total.

Bangladesh have conceded big totals too often, but their improved bowling unit has sparked hope that was all in the past. In the four-year period between the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, they had the joint second-best bowling average among teams participating in the World Cup. As a result, anticipation was high.

Taskin, who is considered the pace leader of the attack, is proud of this record. The questions flowed, and Taskin exploded when asked about the team’s players not performing well in this game, before saying “we didn’t play well” to further questions on the subject.

He told one of the players: “If you consider the performance of the two matches to be random after two years of achievement, then this is a failure. We will try to perform well in the future.” “That’s what I was telling you. There’s no point in making excuses. We couldn’t play well.” The frustration in his voice was clear.

“Different batsmen have different kinds of weaknesses – we have to make them play more quality balls.”

Taskin Ahmed

When he settled down, he showed the way to better results.

“We have to be more precise. Different batsmen have different kinds of weaknesses – we have to make them play more good balls,” he said. “Sometimes we concede runs but we have to bowl more good balls. We have to execute these plans accordingly. We will do well if we can beat opponents with low totals.

“We did not play according to expectations [in this game], although we were playing in mostly batting-friendly conditions. There was enough space for us to do a good job. We started badly, but Shariful and Mehdi [Hasan] “I came back fine.”

Hathurusinghe: The execution let us down in this game

In the previous match against Afghanistan, Bangladesh took seven wickets for 77 runs off the 112 balls they bowled outside off stump.

In the first 37.2 overs against England, Bangladesh went wicketless in 83 balls outside off stump, conceding 108 runs.

However, the plan was to lean against the logs, not off them.

“The plan was not to bowl outside the stumps, the plan was to bowl on the stumps,” coach Chandika Hathurusinghe said. “I think the execution let us down in this game especially. In the last game, we came back later with the help of our spinners. This game, what happened is that our spinners didn’t get us back into the game because of good, smart batting.”

Taskin said that as much as the bowlers did their best to keep the runs low, it was important for the batsmen to try to chase down 300-plus totals in mostly batting-friendly conditions.

“Most of the wickets in India will be friendly knocks. Our batsmen have to be ready to chase 300-plus totals but we, as bowlers, also have to think about keeping the opposition below 300,” he said. “It will happen sometimes but we have to be prepared for both scenarios.”

Muhammad Essam is ESPNcricinfo’s correspondent in Bangladesh. @isam84

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