'Batting has not been at its best'

What began with a sense of discomfort for the hosts ended as a one-sided affair. Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Co will definitely be relieved to have finally gotten some points on the table, but they will remain worried regarding their persistent batting troubles.

Following their 51-run Asia Cup T20 win against UAE yesterday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur, the skipper admitted that his batsmen were not 'at their best' and that he hopes that they click when the 'right time' arrives.

“I won't say that we have been batting at our best. Even against India we could have done better. Today we shouldn't have collapsed, especially since we had a good partnership going. We obviously aren't at our best,” said Mashrafe.

“Apart from the last two matches, we managed to score 150-plus in almost all the games that we played recently. So not being able to do that here is unfortunate,” he added.

Bangladesh's batting order saw Mushfiqur Rahim get promoted from six to four yesterday. In the previous game Shakib Al Hasan batted at five. When asked whether the team was still experimenting with the middle order Mashrafe said: “Not really. The order that we played in today is our original order. Against India we wanted to keep a left-right combination and that's why we had promoted Shakib.”

Mashrafe though was pleased with the way Mahmudullah Riyad performed. The player was on song, helping Bangladesh recover with the bat before scalping crucial wickets and also putting in a good effort on the field.

It was because of his aggression that Bangladesh got 17 runs in the last over and that tilted the odds towards the hosts.

“He is a very important player for us and the best thing is he knows his role very well. He usually bats under pressure because he bats down the order. So when he fails, people tend to complain about him. But today it felt good to see him stand up to the pressure and do well,” said Mashrafe.

“We were hoping that Riyad would stay on strike in the last over because we knew he would be able to take on the spinner. Thankfully that's exactly what he did,” he added.

UAE captain Amjad Javed, on the other hand, blamed his side's inexperience for the loss.

“Definitely 134 is a total that can be chased in T20s. For that you need a good start. But we were playing against Bangladesh and we are not used to playing against top teams. When you are playing these kinds of bowlers for the first time, it's difficult to score,” he said.

“We have been practising hard for the last one year in the ICC academy but there is a difference between practice and playing a real match. We need more experience and for that we need to play more matches,” he added.