After Sri Lanka's massive first innings total on the third day (500-4), Bangladesh had apparently reached the conclusion that it would not be possible for them to handle this attack -- especially Muralidaran on the fourth day track. And expectedly, they surrendered to the champion off-spinner, who claimed six wickets for 54 runs to finish with a series return of 26 wickets.

How could one then expect a fightback from this team who lack any self-belief against a world-class bowling attack? Almost every single batsman echoed throughout the series "the Sri Lanka bowling is too good."

Their attitude towards the five-day game and the way they threw away wickets, one after another, since the first game to the last innings simply irritated the local media, especially the former Lankan cricketers turned commentators, who sometimes visited the press box. A straightforward question that came from everybody was that, "have they come here for fun?"

So it was not surprising that their performance reached a nadir in the third game. It was expected that their performance would gradually improve but rather it was on a constant decline since the first game. They lost the first game inside four days, second inside three and the last inside four days two of which was lost due to rain. It means that Bangladesh suffered the defeat in a little more than two days.

In the previous two games, they had some solace in their second innings performance but they had nothing here yesterday after they were bundled out for 176 runs just before the tea session.

That was the reason why that even a 'positive' man like Bangladesh interim coach Shaun Williams had to fight hard to find some positives from the match.

"It is very difficult to get positives from this kind of result," said the blank-eyed Australian. But he was quick to portray some optimistic views by saying that "Nafees (Shahriar) batted well and the bowling of Syed Rasel was also encouraging and most importantly Ash (Mohammad Ashraful) showed his capacity as a captain in his first assignment. Actually we learned a lot of things from the series."

"We hoped before leaving home that it would be a very competitive series but it was not the case in the end," he added.

Ashraful however was not ready to accept that the outcome was the worst in Bangladesh's six-year Test history and he also denied that his team was eager to get the Test match series over and done with.

"I don't think so because we have hardly played good Test series' except one or two exceptional ones. You think like this because of a three-match series but I must say we have completely failed in batting and bowling," he said.

"Sri Lanka is always a tough opponent especially at home but we had the expectation of better showing this time because we worked hard at home and here, but ultimately our performance went down when compared to the previous one in 2005," he added.

The 23-year-old new Bangladesh skipper particularly blamed his top-order for this disaster as they failed to deliver in the first innings of every Test scoring 89, 62 and 131 respectively.

"I must say our bowlers made hardly any impact in the series but the top-order failure was the main reason behind the disaster. But what I can say is that we are trying to play the Test match according to it's nature and it just takes some time to get back the result of our all hard work," he assured.

Sri Lanka is always a good memory for the right-hander because he not only made his first hundred on his debut against them but also struck two more including a 129-run unbeaten effort in the second game at the P Sara.

But his debut as a captain against them was simply shocking.

"As a player definitely I enjoy to look back at Sri Lanka because I was most successful against them but I will also not hesitate to look at this Test series because as a captain I learnt a lot from the tough series," he said.

Both the Bangladesh coach and captain have tried to be optimistic despite the terrible 3-0 defeat but there was no doubt that the three-match series adventure simply frightened them because they became babes in the series against a top-ranked side.