Bangladesh's Plan A(wry) - 'No excuses,' says shaken Taskin

Taskin Ahmed's face at the media ruck after Bangladesh's crushing defeat to England indicated how the day had gone for his team.

It was Taskin, so the line of questioning was quite obvious: why did the fast bowlers bowl so poorly?

Taskin, usually affable, was glum from the start. And then, faced with a bombardment of questions, looked shaken.

To put things in perspective, Bangladesh had started ordinarily with the ball against Afghanistan in their World Cup opener, too, but they came back well in that game. Here, England had their 100 in the 16th over, 200 in the 33rd, and 298 by the end of the 40th. Shoriful Islam's three wickets did bring down England's run rate a bit in the last ten overs, but they were always going to get a big total.

Bangladesh have conceded big totals often, but their improved pace-bowling unit had given rise to the hope that was all in the past. In the four-year period between the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, they had the second-best combined bowling average among the teams participating at the World Cup. The expectation, as a result, was sky-high.

Taskin, considered the leader of the pace attack, is proud of that record. The questions poured in, and Taskin snapped when asked about the pacers not doing well in this game, before saying "we didn't bowl well" to other questions on the subject.

"If you consider the performance of two matches as haphazard after two years of achievement, it is a failure. We will try to do well in the future," he said to one. "That's what I have been telling you. There's no point in giving an excuse. We couldn't bowl well." The frustration in his voice was palpable.

When he settled down, he elaborated on the path to better results.

"We have to be more accurate. Different batters have different types of weaknesses - we have to make them play more good balls," he said. "Sometimes we will concede runs but we have to bowl more good balls. We have to execute these plans accordingly. We will do well if we can bowl out oppositions for low totals.

"We didn't bowl according to the expectations [in this game], although we were playing in mostly batting-friendly conditions. There was enough room for us to do well. We started badly, but Shoriful and Mahedi [Hasan] came back well."

In the previous game against Afghanistan, Bangladesh took seven wickets for 77 runs off the 112 balls they bowled outside off stump.

In the first 37.2 overs against England, Bangladesh went wicketless in 83 balls outside off stump, conceding 108 runs.

The plan, however, was to bowl at the stumps, not outside them.

"The plan was not to bowl outside the stumps; the plan was to bowl at the stumps," coach Chandika Hathurusinghe said. "I think the execution let us down in this game especially. In the last game, we came back later with the help of the spinners. This game, what happened was our spinners did not bring us back into the game due to the good, intelligent batting."

Taskin said that as much as the bowlers would do their best to keep the runs down, it was important for the batters to try and chase 300-plus totals in mostly batting-friendly conditions.

"Most of the wickets in India are going to be batting friendly. Our batters have to be ready to chase 300-plus totals but we, as bowlers, also have to think about keeping the opposition down to below 300," he said. "It will happen sometimes but we have to be prepared for both scenarios."