Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Mortaza said that Tigers are still not losing hope of qualifying in the semifinal as he feel if they can win their last three matches the points table equation will tilt in their favour.
Bangladesh could have been in a comfortable spot in the race for a semi-final spot if they had beaten Australia but according to Mashrafe, their 48-run loss did not shut all the doors to stake a claim in the much coveted eliminators.
Bangladesh will play with three Asian neighbors Afghanistan, India and Pakistan and if they can win all the three matches and if they are supported by lady luck there is a possibility for them to play the semi-final in the ongoing World Cup.
“I think still you never know (whether we can reach semi-final or not),” said Mashrafe.
“Let’s see what we can do. We still have three matches left. We have to play our best cricket and then let’s see. It’s going to be difficult for sure even if we are able to win all three matches, we still have to look and have a see about what’s going on,” he said.
“But I think for us, it’s very important to play well in all those three matches, especially one at a time,” he said.
“I think at a stage in the middle of the tournament we thought, you know, a few strays going on and in a few matches we will end up in the top 4. A few matches were lost. The tournament will take a different route. Still I think we have a few matches left, you never know. Let’s see,” he concluded.
Mashrafe felt that he missed the service of Mohammad Saifuddin and Mosaddek Hossain in the middle but added that he is expecting them to recover soon.
“We don’t have much concern about injury. Those who were injured were out of this match. Mosaddek and Saifuddin were injured, so they didn’t play. Those who played today performed well. I think many of us were nervous we couldn’t handle the pressure all the time. Sometimes you have to take quick decisions where we did some mistakes. If you see their innings you can figure those out, so we were unable to hold our nerve in some crucial moments,” said Mashrafe.“Between the match, physio was unable to check him out (Safuddin). I hope he will recover quickly. Of course he is taking wickets in every match and giving us breakthroughs in tough situations. So, we obviously miss an in-form cricketer. So, of course we have missed him and I hope he will play from the next match onwards,” he concluded.
