'Slowly gaining confidence in T20Is'
The Nidahas Trophy final may have been lost in one of the most painful endings in Bangladesh cricket history with India batsman Dinesh Karthik powering a flat six off Soumya Sarkar with five runs required off the last ball on Sunday night, but Monday morning dawned with a mild sense of achievement mixed in with the despair of the previous night.
Most of the Bangladesh players -- save those going to Lahore to play in the Pakistan Super League -- returned to Dhaka around noon yesterday, and the feeling was markedly different from the team's last touchdown from a foreign tour last November after they had spent a month and a half being whipped from coast to coast in South Africa.
"Our boys suffered a lot more than us and were more disappointed," said Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hassan at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport yesterday. "They broke down a lot but I told them that winning or losing isn't the most important. What I want is good cricket. They played every game well and like heroes.
"I spent the most time with the team during this series. From the first to the last. The feeling when we left the country [for Sri Lanka] was different [on the back of losses in all formats to Sri Lanka at home] to what we experienced when we went there and now that we are back, the experience is different," Hassan said about the Tigers' collective spirit during the tournament.
"We lost after getting so close; I think all Bangladeshis are feeling the same. Certainly from a position where we could win, it is hard to accept that we lost. There are events which can't be written off easily."
It is hard to know what event he was talking about that could not be written off easily -- perhaps it was the ugly scenes during the last group game against Sri Lanka when, after an umpiring error, skipper Shakib Al Hasan called the batsmen back and non-playing member Nurul Hasan got into verbal scuffles with Thisara Perera and Kusal Mendis.
Nurul, along with Shakib, was handed a 25 per cent fine and a demerit point and yesterday spoke about the events during that ill-tempered night. "I entered the field and was talking to [Mahmudullah] Riyad bhai [who after resumption won the match with a penultimate-ball six] before I asked leg-umpire whether the first delivery was a bouncer.
"Then Thisara came and told me 'who are you to talk? Go away, you don't have to talk'.
"I told him that I wasn't talking to him. It was at that point that he verbally abused me. I told him that it was none of his business. Maybe I should have kept quiet. In the heat of the moment maybe I replied to him.
The most telling quote, expectedly, was from a playing member and a senior who played stellar hands in Bangladesh's march to the final.
"In the last few years, there has been this confidence that we were doing well in ODI and Test formats and on our day we can beat anyone. I think in T20 we are slowly gaining that confidence as well.
"We made it to the final and in that respect it does feel good but it is natural that everyone will feel bad after the defeat," said Mushfiqur Rahim, who was the tournament's second-highest run-scorer with 199 runs, including a 35-ball 72 that sealed Bangladesh's highest successful chase in their second group game against Sri Lanka.
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