Bangladesh stand in captain Tamim Iqbal urged his players to prove their mettle despite they had already lost three-match ODI series to Sri Lanka following their two straight defeats in the first two games.
But he said the Bangladesh need to win the third match, though turned out to be a dead-rubber, for their own satisfaction when they take on Sri Lanka at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo on Wednesday.
Tamim believed that by winning the game, they can still prove that they are better than Sri Lanka and the two defeats in first two matches were not the actual reflection of Bangladesh cricket.
“I think we have a lot to prove to ourselves. We have already lost the series but the victory in third match still can make it 2-1 and the difference will be that we will be able prove something,” Tamim told the reporters in Colombo on Tuesday.
“Of course we couldn’t play to our potential in the first two matches. But if we can win this match playing good cricket, it would be good at least for our own satisfaction. Many people are watching us. They are expecting from us, for them we have to play well.”
Coming off the series as higher ranked team than Sri Lanka and as a favourite to win the series, Bangladesh who are without some of their key players like Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Saifuddin, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Liton Das, found them in a position of embarrassment.
They put up wretched batting, wayward bowling and shoddy fielding to dig their own graveyard and by doing so, they lost the first match by 91 runs and second one by seven wickets.
Tamim admitted their fault, saying that they let their team down by putting up such mediocre performance.
“We have had a lot of high hopes coming to this series. I thought we let ourselves down as a team. I thought we had our moments in patches but we couldn’t capitalize and we have only ourselves to blame. Sri Lanka played some really good cricket, they were a better team than us especially in the last two ODI’s and as I said we have only ourselves to blame, that was the reason I reckon,” he said.
But Tamim kept faith on the existing side and didn’t think the absence of some key players made them sufferer in the series.
“Again, we go back to the same thing. We do miss a lot of first eleven players but I won’t go back to the thing again. From the first press conference till this one, I say that I back the 15 that we have. Yes, if we had the luxury of having everyone then yes we could have had a different team.
“At the moment we still have a game to go, I still back my 15 and I trust them. We just have to play good cricket, we didn’t play good cricket. And if we don’t play good cricket then the best of the players in the team will still be failing. So, we have to play some good cricket with the fifteen that we have and I have complete trust in them,” he remarked.
