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Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar has said his team would like to cap their rollercoaster World Cup campaign with an impressive performance.

Bangladesh suffered a setback when they lost their Super Eights match by 74 runs against non-Test-playing nation Ireland at the Kensington Oval here on Sunday, their fourth defeat in five games in the second round.

Our last game is coming up against the West Indies and we hope we do well in that and go home with some credit, said Bashar, whose side take on the hosts in their final match here on Thursday.

We don’t want to be number eight. We want to be number six or seven. We have one game left and still believe we are not as bad as we played today, he explained. Bangladesh are currently occupying the eighth and last position in the Super Eights table with two points from six matches.

Inconsistency has been the problem for Bangladesh, who posted surprise victories over India and South Africa before floundering against the Cup debutants. One day we look brilliant, the next day we are ordinary. We should be more consistent. We beat two top teams and then came to a game we should have won, but lost, said the Bangladesh captain.

Bangladesh suffered a blow even before the first ball had been bowled against Ireland as they lost in-form seamer Syed Rasel to an ankle injury in the warm-up. Rasel’s loss was a big one because he has been bowling well in the tournament, Bashar said.

Ireland posted a challenging 243-7 after electing to bat and then restricted Bangladesh to 169. Trent Johnston’s Irishmen shocked Pakistan in a group game in Jamaica last month, a victory that eventually knocked the former champions out of the tournament.

We were pretty ordinary in the field today and I think we deserved to lose. I know we lost the toss, but we’d have bowled first anyway. We had the early advantage, but did not use it, said Bashar.

Full credit to Ireland. They batted pretty well. Overall, they played better cricket than us. They were more consistent than us, he remarked. Bashar conceded a little went right for his side after losing the toss as they put in a below-par performance in all departments of the game.

I don’t know what happened today. We played pretty ordinary cricket. It was one of those days when nothing went right for us. We dropped too many catches and missed a couple of run-out chances, he said.

We didn’t seem to have a game plan when we batted. We were supposed to keep wickets, but kept losing them in the opening 20 overs. If we had batted the 50 overs, I think we would have won the game, he added.
Source:The News