Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan expressed disagreement with his team’s decision to field first against India in the T20 World Cup 2024 Super 8 match in Antigua on Saturday (June 22).

Shakib was also not happy with the Tigers’ lack of “fight” as they lost the match by a big margin of 50 runs.

“Personally if you ask me in the Caribbean it’s one or two games - when England chased that 180. Other than that batting first has been the trend for most of the teams and they have been very successful. So, if you look at the stats, I think, yeah, ideally you would have batted first, but maybe the captain and coach thought otherwise,” Shakib said after the match.

“We thought that we could restrict them in a reasonable way so that there is a score in our head and we know how we should go about when we bat. So maybe that’s the reason we decided to field first,” he added.

Invited to bat first, the Men in Blue racked up 196/5 on the board, courtesy of Hardik Pandya’s 50* off 27 balls and crucial contributions from Rohit Sharma (23 off 11), Virat Kohli (37 off 28), Rishabh Pant (36 off 24) and Shivam Dube (34 off 24).

Bangladesh were never really in the chase and managed 146 for 8 in their allotted 20 overs, succumbing to their second Group 1 defeat to be on the brink of elimination.

Asked if he was consulted about the decision being a veteran member of the side, Shakib replied: “No, I don’t have any part or role in this.”

He continued, “These are not the issues of experience or seniority. When there is a leader, a captain, it’s his decision. If we would do well, the credit would go to the captain. If we did bad, we question the decision of the coach and captain. It’s normal. It seems very reasonable to me. But that’s how it goes. It’s how the game is played. If you could see that we took two wickets in the first two overs, then you would think that it was a good decision. Since there were no wickets in the first two overs, naturally we thought that it would be better if we were batting first in this wicket.”

Shakib also disagreed with the decision to start the proceedings with spinners. Mehedi Hasan opened the bowling while Shakib bowled the second over for Bangladesh.

“Well, that’s difficult for me to explain. It’s the coach and captain’s decision. They make the decision who to bowl, when to bowl. So, it’s hard for me to explain,” he remarked.

“But from what I can understand, we thought that the wicket would be a little slower. It looked a little drier, maybe at the start of the game. So that’s why they thought that there might be some help for the spinners. So that’s why I think the captain decided to go with the spinners.”

Scoring runs has been a problem for Bangladesh right through the tournament. Towhid Hridoy is their top run-getter with 139 runs to his name from six innings, while Shakib is the only player to hit a fifty when he scored an undefeated 64 against the Netherlands.

“Throughout this World Cup, as a batting unit I don’t think we did justice to ourselves. I think we have potential to score big runs and the last two games we played… were on very good wickets, probably 175 to 185 was par score and we are well short of those runs against Australia. Today I think India scored 20 more runs but having said that, the intent we had to show at the start of the innings I don’t think it was there,” Shakib said.

“We also lack as a batting unit [on] flat tracks,” Shakib added. “We understand the game around 130,140, 150 because we are habituated playing those kind of games but we cannot think when the score is 180-190-200. The bowling unit might fail one day [and] on that day, the batting unit needs to stand up and we [have] failed in that area.

“We understand 140 or 150-runs game but we need to understand how to play the game of 170 or 180 runs. [Even in the] BPL, if the foreigners play we can chase but haven’t seen much apart from one game where Liton [Das] and Towhid Hridoy chased 180 batting well, where the local [batters] are chasing and winning games. So there is lacking in this area and it still remains the same. Our bowling attack is good when there is help in the wicket but when the wicket is flat we have areas to develop.”

Bangladesh’s last Super 8 match is scheduled against Afghanistan in St Vincent on Monday (June 24).

(Firstpost Inputs)