Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, the chairman of the Bangladesh national team selection panel, urged all to tone down their expectation for the T20 World Cup, stating that the team has not yet reached a stage to set a bigger goal.
"We hope we'll overcome the hurdle of the first round. If we can move to the second round, we will set our next goal," Ashraf, the former national captain who is popularly known as Lipu, said.
"In the group phase, we'll play the teams like South Africa and Sri Lanka. We can expect to win against Sri Lanka but Sri Lanka also knew that can beat us. So the two teams will be under pressure. And practically South Africa is miles ahead of us.
We need to play extremely better than them or they need to play extremely poorly if we want to win this game. The next two games against Nepal and Netherlands which we hope to win."
A few days ago, Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto also urged the fans to keep their expectation low. Ashraf believes Shanto wants to make it understood that they would like to take it match by match rather than expecting too much.
"There is a huge craze for cricket in our country. Even when we didn't play at the big events, we saw a packed stadium. I have been noticing it since 1997. That craze has now spread widely. Maybe the captain said it in that light. He wanted every to refrain from expecting too much," he said.
"In T20 cricket, we haven't reached that stage yet where you can expect the team to reach the semifinal. What he means is to go ahead step by step."
Bangladesh's best result came in the T20 World Cup in 2022 when they won two matches in the Super 12 phase. They played well against India but eventually lost the game by 5 runs on the DLS method.
