Shakib expects best from his side against high-flying South Africa

Bangladesh captain Shakib al Hasan is confident to play against South Africa and expects his team to give their best against the high-flying side.

Bangladesh will face the African side in their fifth World Cup game and the situation as well as the confidence ahead of the game that will take place on Tuesday at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai is a contrast for the sides.

Bangladesh started off well in the tournament beating Afghanistan but they lost their next three games against England, New Zealand and India convincingly. The Tigers did not even much competition in those matches and against in-form South Africa a disaster is on the cards.

On the other hand, South Africa is one of the dominant sides of the tournament, picked up three out of four wins and faced a huge upset when they lost to lowest ranked side Netherlands.

However, they came back strongly, beating defending champions England by a massive 229-run margin. They scored one short of 400-run against England but crossed the milestone easily against Sri Lanka in their opening match before handing Australia a thumping defeat.

The situation and form are absolute mismatched for the sides and the smallish boundary of the Wankhede is expected to favour the power-hitters of South Africa.

To make things worse, Bangladesh missed their skipper and pivotal all-rounder Shakib al Hasan in the last match, his first miss in a World Cup game ever since he made his debut for Bangladesh. He, however, expressed hope of playing the game.

“I did not feel negative when I practiced yesterday. Will practice today as well. If things go right, I will be fit inshallah,” said Shakib at a press conference ahead of the game on Monday.

Shakib was also very upbeat about the chances of his side.

“We have to take one game at a time. You know it in a World Cup it doesn't matter whether you won your last game or you lost your last game. What matters is on the day who is performing better. We saw South Africa flying high, we saw they lost against the Netherlands as well. They played brilliantly against England. That does mean that this thing does happen in cricket, especially in the World Cup. So, we will prepare the way we want to prepare ourselves. So, we want to play our best cricket and then we will see where we are,” said the Bangladesh captain.

Although Bangladesh are expecting to get back their captain but they will miss pacer Taskin Ahmed. Taskin, who is considered as the leader of the pace attack, struggled with his form and fitness in first three games before he was dropped against India.

“Taskin is not available for tomorrow’s game, but hopefully he will be available after tomorrow’s game. He has some shoulder issues that he is suffering for last two games, so physio has decided that if he takes rest for 2 games then hopefully, he’ll be okay for the last 4 games which are important for us and Taskin is an important part of this team, so we don’t want to lose him in the middle of the tournament, and we don’t have much to replace him. So, better to give him rest and hopefully he can play 4 games.

Bangladesh bowling lacked rhythm in the last three matches and their batting also struggled on the batting friendly conditions. Mehidy Hasan Miraz, who was promoted at the top order against Afghanistan for good, was tried several times against big teams with failure. That also jeopardized the whole batting order as proper batters had to come later in the rank. But Shakib thought otherwise.

“Ever since Miraz scored a century against Afghanistan at the Asia Cup, we had the plan to send him at the top of the order against Afghanistan again. Meanwhile, he batted well against England and Sri Lanka at the practice matches. Naturally, when one of your batters are in form you would love to give him more chances. We wanted to give him a chance thinking in that line.

“Obviously, some of our better batters are batting late. But, no one can guarantee they would get run on top order. We still could make 280-290 against India and New Zealand.

Mahmudullah is fulfilling his responsibility brilliantly. If we promote him in the order, get him off his role and if he does bad, then you would feel bad so do we. You would criticize.”

Shakib discussed various other issues like his IPL experience in this ground, the heat and humidity of Mumbai, the pride a Bangladeshi feels playing for the country in his 19-minute-long presser and hoped things will be better for Tigers in the forthcoming matches.