Middle-order mess wounds Tigers

Liton Das produced an incredible knock of 60 runs from 27 balls to give Bangladesh a flying start and hope of beating India for the first time in a T20 World Cup, but a horrendous collapse from the middle-order saw Bangladesh fall five runs short.

But the picture has been the same for Bangladesh throughout the tournament as none of their middle-order batters has managed to string together a proper innings, minus maybe one from Afif Hossain.

None of the batters playing in the middle-order for Bangladesh have managed to reach three figures in total runs in the tournament thus far, despite four matches being played.

Even Liton, before his scintillating knock on Wednesday, had scored only 57 runs in three innings with a strike rate of 105.

Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan has had a poor outing with the bat too, despite him getting out on a wrong call of the umpire in their game against South Africa. The Tigers’ skipper only has 44 runs in four innings and has a strike rate of only 97.77.

Nurul Hasan Sohan managed a quickfire 25 off 14 against India that took the Tigers close, but in the previous 25 balls he faced in the tournament, he had only managed 16 runs.

But the biggest disappointment for Bangladesh in the tournament so far has been Yasir Ali Chowdhury. The middle-order batter only came into the crease in the last over against Zimbabwe, but against both Netherlands and India, he fell cheaply despite having the time to settle in and take the team forward. So far in the tournament, he has only scored five runs in three matches.

And it hurt them the most during the India clash. After Liton’s blistering start, Bangladesh suddenly saw themselves as the favourites. Even after the rain break, they needed only 85 off nine overs with all 10 wickets in hand.

That equation came down to 52 from the last five overs with eight wickets in hand. But the Bangladesh middle-order crumbled like a house of cards as they lost Afif, Shakib, Yasir, and Mosaddek within just 11 balls to see themselves requiring 43 off the last three overs, something which Nurul and Taskin Ahmed tried to achieve, but was eventually too much for them.

When the match require smart batting from their middle-order, Bangladesh only received mindless slogging that only led to dismissals.

Shakib accepted that they should have won from the position they had been in.

“We should have chased down 52 runs in five overs with eight wickets in hand. With the batting lineup we had, I believe we were capable. But unfortunately, we could not. We lost two-three wickets in the middle, and then it was difficult for us to get back in the match,” he said in the post-match press conference.

The Bangladesh skipper also admitted that it was because of both inexperience and panic.

“When we got the target that we had to score 84 (85) runs in nine overs, anybody will take that. You have 10 wickets in hand, you’ll take that. And obviously, Bhuvne (Bhuveneshwar Kumar) was almost done. And you take that run and you take that challenge and you would look to chase that down. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it.

“It was a combination of both, lack of experience sometimes and also panicking because we don’t play too many close games. So sometimes when we are in that situation, we don’t know how to do it,” Shakib said.

Despite their defeat to India, Bangladesh still have a dim light of hope alive of reaching the semis. For that, the South Africa-Netherlands match needs to be washed out or the Dutch need to win, while Bangladesh need to beat Pakistan.

But if they fail to sort their middle-order mess, that chance will go straight out the window, or Australia.