Bangladesh clinched the three match ODI series by winning the second ODI of the three-match ODI series at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
Team India captain Rohit Sharma’s half-century went in vain as Bangladesh won the contest by five runs, taking a lead of 2-0 in the series.
Losing Skipper, Rohit Sharma said:
It (thumb injury) isn’t too great. Some dislocation and some stitches. Fortunately, not a fracture and so, I was able to bat. When you lose a game, there are positives and negatives. From being 69/6, allowing them to get to 270-odd wasn’t a great effect from our bowlers. We started well but the middle overs and the back end is what’s hurting us a lot. Happened in the last game as well. It’s something we need to work on. Not taking anything away from Mehidy and Mahmudullah, was a great partnership but we also need to find ways of breaking such partnerships. In One-Day cricket, it’s about partnerships and when you get those, you have to ensure that they are converted to match-winning partnerships. That’s what they did. If you get those 70-run stands, you need to convert them into 110-120 run partnerships for the team to win games, as it isn’t easy for the new batter. Need to be braver in the middle. There are few injury concerns, we need to get to the bottom of this. Need to try and monitor them, because it’s important to understand this. When they come to play for India, they need to be at more than 100 percent. We need to monitor their workload because we can’t have guys coming in to play for the country half-fit.
Winning Skipper, Litton Das said:
Very happy, to win in my first series as captain, it feels good. We felt that 240-250 was a good score. We were under pressure but they (Mahmudullah and Mehidy) were brilliant. Don’t know what their conversations were, but what they did was simply superb. I wanted to rotate my main bowlers around because it was a good pitch in the second half, so I couldn’t afford to bowl too many of my main bowlers early on. The focus for the next game will also be about winning.
Player of the Match, Mehidy Hasan said:
All credit goes to God for giving me an opportunity to do this. Nothing else to say. Feels very good. Last few years, I have worked hard on the batting and focused on certain areas to improve. My coaches have given me a lot of information on improving my game. Riyad Bhai (Mahmudullah) kept telling me that we need to keep playing deep into the innings and the conversations were mostly about keeping small targets of partnerships. I was just trying to hit the good areas with the ball and put pressure on them.
