Bangladesh captain Mashrafee bin Murtaza on Friday regretted that they could not make the World Cup more colourful for Sakib al Hasan despite the all-rounder putting an astonishing performance throughout the tournament.
‘We feel really sorry for Sakib. This is our biggest regret,’ Mashrafee said after the team’s 94-run defeat against Pakistan in the last match.
Sakib touched a new height with the bat when he struck yet another half-century against Pakistan at Lord’s on Friday to sign off his campaign with a staggering 606 runs in eight innings.
Sakib, with 64 off 77 balls, his seventh fifty-plus innings in the tournament, became only third player in history to score 600 or more runs in a single World Cup.
The all-rounder had the record of Sachin Tendulkar and Mathew Hayden, who made 673 and 659 runs respectively in 2003 and 2007, within his reach as he was trying to help Bangladesh knock off Pakistan’s 315-9.
But he was made to fight alone after Bangladesh lost their first four wickets for 136 runs and the pressure eventually got the better of him as he missed a cut shot to be left content with just a fifty.
Until his dismissal to Pakistan’s new pace sensation Shaheen Afridi, everything Sakib touched with the bat turned into gold as he played with ease when other batsmen continued to struggle from the other end.
This was the case throughout the campaign starting with Bangladesh’s opening match against South Africa when his fifty and two wickets enabled the Tigers to get off the mark with a win.
Sakib, who finished the campaign with two hundreds and five fifties, also claimed 11 wickets in the World Cup, including 5-29 against Afghanistan, the best bowling figure for Bangladesh in the tournament till date.
He was the man of the match in all three Bangladesh wins, which also made him a prime contender for the player-of-the-tournament award.
Mashrafee believed Sakib’s World Cup could have been a little bit better if the other players had stepped up.
But apart from Mustafizur Rahman’s late bowling heroics, which enabled him to get five wickets each in last two matches, and Mushfiqur Rahim’s occasional spark with the bat, Bangladesh largely failed to perform as a unit.
‘The way he played in this tournament we really deserved to be in semi-final. When someone of team plays like this it’s normal they would be in semis,’ he said.
‘But unfortunately, we could not do it. When we needed to score runs, take catch and field well we could not do that.’
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