Picture Credit: Twitter
Shakib Al Hasan-led Bangladesh suffered a defeat at the hands of Pakistan in their last game of the league stage which was also a virtual quarterfinal at the T20 World Cup 2022. Resultantly, the Tigers were knocked out of the tournament. While captain Shakib rued the batting collapse and accepted that they could have done better, former Pakistan speedster Wasim Akram has made a bold remark about Bangladesh’s loss.
Akram has said that Bangladesh has no one else to blame for the loss but themselves. The former Pakistan pacer pointed out the way Bangladeshi batters got out one after the other and wasted the start provided by Najmul Shanto and Soumya Sarkar. Akram also bashed Shanto for playing a rash shot and giving the game away to Pakistan.
Akram lost his cool to such an extent that he recommended Bangladesh players to visit a psychologist.
“Bangladesh have to blame themselves. They should. If I was a captain of Bangladesh team or the coach of Bangladesh team, I will make sure these guys see psychologists. Because at one stage, Shanto was on 54 and things were going well then. They were 73 for 2 and I thought they’ll get to 160. But then Shanto stepped out and played a weird shot off Iftikhar and was bowled. If you had kept on taking singles, the score would have reached 155,” a visibly disappointed Akram said.
He also said that the Bangladesh batters should have played Shaheen Afridi’s bowling a little carefully. “In an international level, when you see a certain bowler was coming to bowl and you know that the opposition captain has brought him to take wickets, that’s where you don’t play a shot. You try to rotate the strike in that particular over but the Bangladesh players made up their minds to hit him and hit Shaheen only,” the former Pakistan captain said.
Notably, Bangladesh was 73/3 in 11 overs and were set for a big total, but they lost wickets in a cluster and ended up scoring 127/8 in their 20 overs.
