T20 World Cup 2021: Our batting is a concern, says Mahmudullah after shocking loss against Scotland

Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah admitted that their batting is a concern after they suffered a shocking loss against Scotland in their opening match of the ongoing T20 World Cup.

Scotland posted a fighting score of 140 runs after Mahmudullah won the toss and decided to bowl first.

However, Bangladesh could not get going in the run-chase as they kept losing wickets at regular intervals. In fact, experienced batters – Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim – got off to starts but could not take their team over the line.

Bangladesh had a sedate start as they could only score 25 runs in the powerplay overs and also lost two wickets. Chris Greaves was the pick of the bowlers for Scotland as the leg-spinner accounted for Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim. Greaves conceded only 19 runs in the three overs he bowled and thus he was awarded the Player of the match.

“I am very much frustrated,” Mahmudullah said. “Our batting is a concern. We have to bat better. We have to play aggressive cricket, regardless of the situation. We have a deep batting line-up, with Mohammad Saifuddin at No. 9. We may need to think over some changes tomorrow.”

In fact, Bangladesh failed to hit the ground running and the asking rate kept shooting up as their batters were not able to get the boundaries at regular intervals. Rahim and Mahmudullah scored at just better than a run-a-ball whereas Shakib Al Hasan scored his runs at a strike rate of 71.43.

“We didn’t deliberately bat slowly. We couldn’t hit those boundaries. We have to bat better next time. A lot of things will come up since we lost the game. I think we didn’t play well today, but we are a good T20 team. We have the capability. When we play our best cricket, we can win games,” said Mahmudullah.

“We couldn’t make runs in the Powerplay. You need to start well chasing 140. I think Mushfiqur (Rahim) and Shakib (Al Hasan) made some recovery but in the middle (overs), we didn’t bat well even though it was on a good wicket. We made more mistakes.

“I think some big overs off the spinners would have raised our run rate, but probably losing wickets in the middle overs prevented us from getting those big overs. The asking run-rate, as a result, went up,” said the 35-year-old.

Bangladesh will now face Oman on Tuesday.