This win is special for every Bangladeshi, but for captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza it revives some magical memories as he is the only remaining player of the Bangladesh team which recorded a historic victory against Australia by the same margin at the same venue 12 years back.
It was special day for Mashrafe whatever decision he took went his way. First he included Taskin Ahmed and Mosaddek Hossain’s off-spin was the surprise package that yielded three crucial wickets in the death overs and restricted New Zealand to what seemed a manageable total.
“It’s a great feeling. I was here both times [in 2005 and here against New Zealand yesterday. The boys made the chances count and that’s a great feeling,” Mashrafe said at the post-match presentation
At the post-match press briefing, Mashrafe said: “I don’t know whether we will play in the semifinal, but if we do then we will put up a much better performance.
If we can’t make it to the semifinals then there’s nothing we can do. We achieved what we wanted to in this match. I can’t ask Australia to lose the match, so I wish the best of luck to both teams, according to ICC website”
When asked when he started to believe that the Tigers had a chance to win the match, Mashrafe responded: “”When we crossed 100, I started to believe. But that they would score 200 is phenomenal. It was beyond imagination.”
Mashrafe added that this today’s was a kind of game which Bangladesh would need to win if they wanted to reach the next level.
“We proved a lot with this win today and we can move forward with this kind of result. We have to rate this higher than any of the other wins because this will elevate our cricket to the next level,” said Mortaza.
“We won at home and now we have also started winning away matches. So now people will start to say that we really are a good team. We did our job, now we will be looking forward to tomorrow’s (Saturday) match.”
