'Couldn't handle pressure'

If the special focus on T20 cricket over the past three months had raised hopes of an upturn in Bangladesh's fortunes in their least preferred format, yesterday's 45-run defeat to India in the Asia Cup T20 opener disproved the notion. Given the relative strengths of the teams -- India's limited-overs batting is feared all over the world -- a defeat was probably on the cards but the disheartening aspect of the heavy loss was that there was neither a tactical nor a technical improvement in the Tigers' approach to T20 batting.

The chase of 167 on a green pitch against an in-form Ashish Nehra is admittedly a difficult one, but the manner of Bangladesh's meek surrender was cause for alarm. Opener Soumya Sarkar seemed woefully inept at handling the moving ball, Mohammad Mithun played across the line and Imrul Kayes with a 24-ball 14 exemplified the Tigers' inability to manoeuvre the ball into gaps when boundaries were not on offer.

“We lost early wickets and at the same time we could not build partnerships. If we could balance the two then maybe it would have been different,” said a subdued Mashrafe Mortaza after the match. “I also think that it was the matter of one over, where if we scored something like 15 runs or so then we could have made up the difference.”

The highest scoring over yielded 11 runs for the Tigers, but that was in the 16th over when Mushfiqur Rahim, coming in at number six, hit two fours off Ravindra Jadeja. With a required run rate in excess of 16, the match was all but lost by then.

“Power is not something you can generate through practice but something you have naturally,” said the captain when asked whether a lack of power was behind Bangladesh's batting woes. “It is more important to play to your strengths. Whether it was in our recent matches or during practice we were able to get 160-165 runs, so it was not like it wasn't gettable. I think we were not able to execute our plans after we lost two early wickets, and we could not do our job under pressure.  If we told ourselves that we can turn things around like they did, we could have played better cricket. We faltered in our decision-making.”

The turnaround Mashrafe talked about in India's innings came about when Rohit Sharma, after enduring a difficult start, made the most of his reprieve at the hands of Shakib Al Hasan at point. “That can happen in cricket, Shakib is one of our better fielders and anyone could have dropped that catch,” said Mashrafe, adding that they will try to iron out the few fielding lapses that cost the team runs.

India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was pleased with the win and praised the efforts of Sharma and rookie all-rounder Hardik Pandey, who helped boost India's total. “I think if you look, overall the wicket was difficult. Rohit's innings was special because you needed a partnership at that point in time,” said Dhoni.