Hiding the elephant!

What do the Hong Kong cricket team and the West Indies cricket team have in common? Apparently both can get Bangladesh all out in less than 20 overs. Also in common after these two very embarrassing defeats is Bangladesh skipper Mushfiqur Rahim's words, which may make observers feel like they are stuck in the twilight zone, doomed to live out the same eventuality over and over again.
Bangladesh were all out for 98 in 19.1 overs, yet the skipper chose to focus on the fielding which, while it did leak 20 runs, cannot realistically be blamed in a 73-run defeat. "I thought the bowling was okay but the fielding, we dropped a couple of catches, gave away cheap boundaries. If we restricted them to 155 and 160 and then if we could have had a good start and then we could chase it down," said Mushfiqur after the debacle.
There have been signs -- a management meeting on the eve of the match in the aftermath of their defeat against Hong Kong -- that all has not been well in the Bangladesh camp. "Pressure will of course be there, and when you play badly there will obviously be discussions. It is difficult if only one or two are performing. Five or six of us have to raise our hands and do the job. We have to do that whichever way we can, because no one expected such bad performances from us and neither did we. Hopefully in the next three games we can perform better," said a dejected Mushfiqur, who was in a forthcoming mood after the disappointment of the year so far.
The pressure off the field was also implicitly hinted at when he said that the players could not play their natural game. "Previously our team could play freely, everyone had a place from which they could play their natural games. In the last two games we did not get the results and maybe there are some batsmen, some players who are under pressure to keep their places," he said.
West Indies were supposed to be the easier of their four opponents, having won two of their four previous matches against the Caribbean side before yesterday. "The hope is that we should play 40 overs of competitive cricket to show that we can improve and come up with a good fight against these big teams [India, Pakistan and Australia]," he said.
His muddled thinking was reflected when he answered a question of how they can turn things around. "We need a few good performances in this series," he said.
For a man who is known for his attention to the right processes, his focus on results and apparent avoidance of the main apparent problem -- mindless batting -- hints that there may not be any positive ones in the near future.