Dhaka. After convincingly losing to Australia and completing a clean sweep of 4 successive losses in the league stage of the ongoing World Cup T20, defending minnows Bangladeshis have managed to retain the title of the No. 1 minnow in world cricket.
The defeat set off a wave of celebrations across Bangladesh with jubilant fans marching on the streets uncontrollably with flags and clogging them for hours. The defeat felt even more special as it happened on the home soil with many equating the achievement to the world cup victory by India in 2011 in front of their home crowd.
Australia on the other hand were a visibly dejected lot, having come this far on the back of some consistently poor performances and still failing to fall to the occasion when it mattered the most.
Thrilled to retain the trophy.
“Yeah we choked,” accepted Australian captain Bailey barely trying to recover from the humiliating win.
“We probably made a mistake of persisting with Finch despite him performing really well so far, who could not repose the faith shown in him by management by once again carrying forward his good form and scoring heavily,” Australian coach Lehman rued not having a player of Rohit Sharma or Dernbach’s talent and caliber who could have done the job for the team.
Though Bangladesh was a bit wary of England at the beginning of the tournament, but unfortunately for English team, they managed to chase down a huge total of 190 against Sri Lanka and thus were automatically out of contention. Though England did try to salvage some respect through a consolation loss to Netherlands before bowing out of the tournament.
“We are proud of ourselves. Having come so far since making our debut as test team in 2000, not once did we falter and let go off the title,” Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hassan recalled. “There were few hiccups along the journey when Kenya and Zimbabwe threatened to snatch away the title from us, but we got full support of management and selectors in ensuring it remains with us.”
Meanwhile, South Africa, after shockingly choking Netherlands and New Zealand, are confident that they will be back to choking themselves soon in the tournament.
No related news.
No comments:
Post a Comment