Asia Cup 2018: Mashrafe Mortaza speaks about his team, reveals where the match slipped away

India entered the finals as overwhelming favourites, Bangladesh were without two of their marquee players and it was expected to be a rather one-sided affair. However, Bangladesh were not willing to walk away from the fight and they displayed their fighting spirit. The match ended when the final ball was bowled and this has left captain Mashrafe Mortaza mighty impressed with his side.

"The boys should feel proud but at the same time I think we have to learn so many things. We fought till the last ball, but we made a lot of mistakes on the field today — batting and bowling. I hope we won a lot of hearts. Obviously, the team can be proud, but we have to move forward from here... Boys did a very good job without two key members from the side in Shakib and Tamim," Mashrafe said after the match.

'Wanted to restrict the runs'

He added that the plan was to score at least 260 in the first innings and then build pressure, but despite not achieving the target, the bowlers did a commendable job. Giving an insight into the way he went about planning the second innings, Mashrafe said that he did not want to give away easy runs and build dot ball.

"I wanted to bowl the quicks first, because I wanted to restrict the runs since they were going after us and trying to play shots at that stage. I wanted to leave the last over for Nazmul or Mahmudullah. I thought if the pacers bowled well from 45th over, then there was a good chance that there would be about 10 runs to defend in the last over. Bowlers have done a really good job this tournament, every time batters score more than 240, we won the match," he reflected.

Bangladesh got off to a blazing start as openers Liton Das and Mehidy Hasan put on 120 for the first wicket, but then they collapsed and were bundled out for 222, and this is what cost them the game. The captain conceded that they did not drive home the advantage and allowed the game to slip away. 

"Everytime we play this kind of tournament, we're struggling somewhere. Today we had a good start (with the bat) but couldn't go through. Even if you look at the last three-four matches, we lost so many wickets early but still we managed to score 240-250," he signed off.