Dhaka – The dream of reaching semifinals came to an end after loss to India by 28 runs, but Tigers’ World Cup did not finish yet as they are set to face Pakistan at Lord’s, London on Friday.
Tigers are eyeing to win this game to end the World Cup on a positive note.
The match will kick off at 3:30 pm (BdST) and Maasrangatv, Gtv, Btv, Bioscope (bioscopelive.com) and Rabbithole (rabbitholebd.com) will telecast the game.
Beating South Africa in their first match of the World Cup assault gave the Tigers a must-needed boost, but they failed to capitalize that properly.
They failed to replicate the same performance against New Zealand when they suffered their first loss by two wickets.
Mushfiqur Rahim missed a run-out chance of Kane Williamson on that match on a childish manner, positioning himself in front of the stumps and preventing the ball from a direct hit, which perhaps was the biggest reason behind Bangladesh’s failure to progress beyond the league stage.
Williamson was at 9 while getting that life, later, he ended up scoring 40 and Bangladesh lost the game narrowly by tine margin of two wickets.
Bangladesh lost their second successive game against England by a big margin of 106 runs. They leaked as many as 386 runs after the surprising decision of bowling first winning the toss.
And these two losses faded up the momentum that Bangladesh had achieved beating South Africa in the first game.
However, they could have repaired their fragile confidence in the game against Sri Lanka, but the weather did not allow them to do so as the match was washed out without a ball being bowled.
Bangladesh won two of their next three games- against West Indies and Afghanistan. But a loss against India threw them away from the contention of being one of the top four teams in the World Cup for the first time.
This time, Bangladesh regretted another missed chance as TamimI qbal put down an easy catch off Rohit Sharma when he was at 9.
Rohit exploited his chance hitting 104 off 92 with seven fours and five sixes. Riding on this innings India set up a challenge of 314, and Bangladesh tumbled for 286 and lost the game by 28.
Bangladesh aimed a semifinals spot before leaving home for the World Cup. But their dream is over with one more match to play in the event.
However, ending the World Cup on a positive note became the latest target of Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and his team.
Pakistan, who also nearly out of the contention of a semifinals spot, perhaps set the same target to end the World Cup positively.
It was Bangladesh’s first World Cup in 1999 when the Tigers beat Pakistan in a World Cup match. Since then, Bangladesh never faced Pakistan in the World Cup. However, Bangladesh locked horns with Pakistan 29 times on other occasions after that famous World Cup victory and won four of them.
Given the current form of the Bangladesh team, the latest match at Lord’s should be very tough for the Pakistanis.
This match will be remembered to Bangladeshis as the last World Cup appearance for Mashrafe, who is nearly done with his international career but yet to announce the retirement.
However, the cricketer-turned-politician, Mashrafe, confirmed that he will never be able to represent the country in a World Cup match again.UNB
