Bangladesh opener Soumya Sarkar insisted that they have the opportunity to prove them as better team than Sri Lanka despite losing the three-match series against Sri Lanka by losing first two matches in a row.
Sri Lanka firstly crushed Tigers by 91 runs in the first match before recording a comfortable seven-wicket win in the second match, making third and final game on Wednesday a dead-rubber.
With these two losses, Bangladesh indeed conceded four defeats in a row in ODI cricket with the first two came in World Cup against India and Pakistan.
But Soumya Sarkar said everything won’t be changed despite losing four matches in a row. “The way we were playing our cricket, the four straight defeats shouldn’t take the gloss off from us. In the last match against Sri Lanka, we have the opportunity still to prove us better team than them,” Soumya told the reporters on Monday in Colombo.
Having said that, Soumya revealed the total team management is worried with what happened in the Sri Lanka, in which they came to win the series.
“We had the confidence that we will play well in this series. Everyone is determined to win the series,” the left-hand opener said.
“But we lost the first two matches quite badly for which everyone is worried because we are not that type of bad team which we showed in those matches. The team management is trying to find out what happened actually. But what is imperative now is to try to come back strongly in the third match to win the game.”
In the last two bilateral series in Sri Lanka in 2013 and 2017, Bangladesh were able to draw the ODI series and therefore the expectation was high this time around.
Soumya said they are disappointed with what happened here but this time the target is only to avoid the whitewash.
“We have already lost the series but our target is to turn the things around and showed out character in the last match.”
Soumya has been in a poor form since the World Cup but still in that cricket’s biggest tournament he gave the side fluent start in some matches. But in Sri Lanka a different version of Soumya was seen as he struggled for runs and made just 15 and 11 in the first two ODIs.
Even he has no fifty plus score in the last 10 matches, which he termed as quite alarming for him.
“It feels really bad. I have been trying my best and practicing hard but can’t make runs as I expected. Before the World Cup I got runs. But things have panned out differently now. I have been still working hard and hopefully I will get out of this very soon.”
