Bangladesh need to be disciplined against India: Shakib

The former skipper remained calm and exuded confidence and said Bangladesh would need to play their best cricket to stage an upset. “From a personal point of view, I am confident. It is hard to understand everyone’s mind and I cannot comment on that. But I am confident of a good show,” Shakib said. Shakib said Indians have a lot of match winners and said getting early wickets would be the key. 

“Kohli is a key player and along with the likes of Dhawan and Rohit they are match-winners. Yes, they are not scoring runs but we know we need to be careful. Their batting order is one of the best in world cricket now. We need to be disciplined in our bowling and fielding to restrict them to have a chance,” the all-rounder added. 

While poor fielding cost Bangladesh a win against Australia, Shakib hoped his team would pull up their socks in time. “Obviously, fielding is a big part in a T20 game. We would love to take all the catches and save runs in ground fielding. We unfortunately couldn’t do it against Australia. It was disappointing because we have some young players and outstanding fielders. 

Hopefully, we won’t make the mistakes,” he said adding that any player can have a bad day at office.  The 28-year-old said there was no point brooding over the exit of Taskin Ahmed and stressed the need to look ahead. “Obviously, he was bowling well and was an important member in the last six months or so. However, it is not that everything has ended. I believe we still have the team that can do well on Wednesday,” he said. 

According to the southpaw, scoring more runs in the powerplay would be a crucial factor in deciding the outcome of the match. “We have only scored on an average of 30 runs in the first six overs as against the normal 45 to 50 runs the other teams have been scoring. I feel that is the best time to bat. We lost half the game on Monday at this juncture. If we had scored 15-20 more runs, it would have been a different ball game,” he added.