[Reporter:]
Another chapter added to the Sri Lanka Bangladesh rivalry, looking back any regrets?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Not at all.
One of our fielders came to me and said, if you appeal, the law says he’s out because he hasn’t taken his guard within the time frame. So, then I appealed to the umpires, umpire told me whether you’re going to call him back or not, if I said he’s out, then you call him back, it doesn’t look good. I said I won’t call him back.
We played under-19 together, World Cup, so I know Angelo for a long, long time, since 2006. Yeah, unfortunate, but within the rules.
[Reporter:]
Following up on that question, yes, it’s out as per the rule but in terms of spirit of cricket, did you ever think of calling him back again?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Well, then ICC should look into it and change the rules.
[Reporter:]
As a batter, if you put yourself in Angelo’s shoes and if the same thing happened to you, what would you feel?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
I’ll be careful. It doesn’t happen to me.
[Reporter:]
A brilliant partnership out there that you know scripted the base of the victory. So, what were
the chats with Shanto when you guys were already two wickets down within the powerplay and then step by step you went ahead and then again, a little hiccup during the end of the game. So, what transpired between you and Shanto when you guys were in the middle?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Yeah, I mean, when we lost two wickets, we had to rebuild. We know the wickets is good. We had to bat deep, make a partnership and that will ease a lot of pressure. That’s exactly what we did and when we had opportunity we capitalized, we counterattacked them, put a lot of pressure back on them because it wasn’t an easy piece to bat on. Also, dew was helping us a lot. So, we know that ball was coming onto the bats, we had to just bat deep. When we were on the 17th, 18th over, we were just saying that if we bat 30 th over, we can take the game close to the finishing like and if one of us stays, we can finish it early. And after that, when we lost a couple of quick wickets, myself and Shanto got out. We still were looking to chase it 41.2 overs or something that give us ahead of, I think, a couple of the teams. That’s what we are looking to do. Trying to do that cost us some wickets. But in the end, very happy the way we played.
[Reporter:]
On the Matthews dismissal, I think his helmet strap broke as he was getting ready to face you and later on, he came and I think he talked to you after the umpires had given him out. What did he say? What was your reaction to it? It was an equipment malfunction?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
As I told someone earlier that we have been playing since 2006, you know, against each other. We have played a lot of games against Sri Lanka. I know him very well; he knows me very well. So, he came and asked me whether if I withdraw my appeal or not If I want to, I said, you know, I understand your situation. It was unfortunate, but I don’t want to.
[Reporter:]
Do you think what happened before World Cup with opener Tamim Iqbal, is it a hampered Bangladesh situation in this World Cup? Is the situation have been different in this World Cup?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
I don’t want to make any comments on that. That’s irrelevant to me at this moment.
[Reporter:]
This is probably the best performance for your team in this World Cup, are you disappointed that this has come when you are almost out of contention. Do you regret that this performance didn’t come when you were in a better position?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Yeah, I mean if we could have done that in earlier matches that would have been better. One or two matches, if we could have won, that would have been nice. We would have been on a nice position at this moment. Yes, we had a lot of expectation, not from outside, not from our country. I thought we let ourselves down. I thought the target we set within the team, the thing that we thought that we are capable of doing, we couldn’t do it. So that’s the disappointment we all have.
[Reporter:]
You have seen Bangladesh’s evolution as a cricket team since your debut. You reached a height when you qualified for the quarterfinals and then the slide began and all that. Where do you see Bangladesh cricket going from here, now that you, Mushfiq, and all are in the last phase of your careers? Where do you see Bangladesh cricket at this moment? And what should be the road ahead? There are too many off-field controversies and all that. So where do you think?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
There are so many things I can think of but it needs probably hour or two, if I want to discuss that. Better to discuss with the BCB and hopefully they’ll take some of my advice or some of the players that has played long period of time for Bangladesh. They will take those advice and move forward. Yeah, I mean that that’s all we can do at this moment.
[Reporter:]
Was time and over rate a consideration when you did not allow Mathews to continue?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
No, I thought we were not slow on over rates today. But yeah, it was in the rules that a batsman has to come to the crease within that certain period of time and he wasn’t there at that time.
[Reporter:]
Regarding the time-out appeal, who came up with this idea of a time-out appeal in your team?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
One of our players.
[Reporter:]
Okay, if you can tell me his name? [nodded, no] I have another question, in the middle of the match, we saw a lot of heated arguments about many things, we observed and it seemed to us like that. After the game, the two teams had a friendly exchange or not?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Didn’t you see that?
[Reporter:]
No, we didn’t. I mean, we didn’t notice that. Was there a friendly exchange or did you talk with them? Did you talk with Mathews?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
You didn’t notice this, you came to watch the game. What’s this?
[Reporter:]
No, no. You can say. We can’t hear what you are saying there. It’s not possible to hear that from far away.
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
You mean, what was the conversation when we were playing?
[Reporter:]
No, after the match.
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
There was no conversation after the game.
[Reporter:]
It was seen that you didn’t shake hands.
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
It’s not that we didn’t shake hands. They have left.
[Reporter:]
It’s alright that it’s in the book, but there’s a spirit that we talk about always in cricket. The situation Bangladesh team was in the World Cup before this match or during this match, if you didn’t have that desperation, would you do the same thing in a normal cricket match? This thing hasn’t happened in the last 146 years history of cricket. This is the first time it happened.
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
History part. I don’t know if I would have done it or not. But in today’s match, we had to win. If we are in a war, I think you should try to do everything to make your team or country win. So, I did the same thing.
[Reporter:]
Still, a long way to go. You have to play in the Champions trophy. You have to play against Australia in the next match, and 4 teams still have a chance. How do you see this opportunity and the next match with Australia? Australia is in good form now. How do you think there is still a lot of challenge left?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
I think today’s match will give us confidence. This will calm a little in the dressing room. The noise will be reduced a little. This will help us play better. But Australia obviously is a very good team. The way they played cricket until now, they are one of the contenders. Today’s match was good. But if we can keep it up, maybe we can play a better match. We have the belief, this win would help us a lot for that. One more match is very important for us if we can win. Then we can be sure that we will qualify for the World Cup. So, it’s a do-or-die situation for us. So, we would try to win the match giving our best.
[Reporter:]
As you have batted today, you and Shanto, I mean, Bangladesh didn’t have any 100-run partnerships before today. Did this partnership hurt Bangladesh the most? This is the first question and the second one is, did you ever think in this World Cup you could try yourself in the number 3 position where you did so well in the last World Cup?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Actually, there was no situation to think about this after coming to this stage, Because when I came back after the suspension of the 2019 World Cup, I never tried to play for the number 3 position. So, when a player has been batting at number 4 and 5 for the last 2 years, it’s difficult for him to go above that position suddenly and take on a new challenge. And I don’t feel good to take such challenges all the time. So that is a big reason I think for not batting on the top order. And the partnership is definitely important. We always say this in the dressing room that we need a good partnership. Yes, we may score big individually, but if we can’t have a partnership on the top order, we can only repair the damages in the lower order. It is always very important to bat well from the top to win a match. And at the same time, it is equally important to make a big partnership. This is what happened today and you can see the result.
[Reporter:]
You said that Australia is one of the contenders, you have played in the wickets of Pune. You are familiar with it. After such a win, where Bangladesh was on its toes for the entire match. They were ahead during batting innings. From this experience or this confidence do you think that Bangladesh can defeat Australia and finish the World Cup with 6 points? Is that belief still built in now after this win?
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Yes, as I said, this will obviously give us confidence. We don’t have any other option but to win the match, frankly speaking. We have to win and we will be ready to do anything for it. Sometimes when we lose, we don’t have the insistence or confidence to win. So, this match will give us that insistence or confidence that yes, we can do well with any team. So, I believe that our team will play the next match with a different approach and try their best to play good cricket and win the match.
[Reporter:]
Shanto started well this tournament, 59, and not out against Afghanistan. And he was very good in the last two and a half years. He lost his form. Do you think now that Bangladesh didn’t take an extra batsman, it was a big deal? Because otherwise Shanto would have been dropped because he just scored 28 runs in 6 innings.
[Shakib Al Hasan:]
Actually, we had such a high confidence in our batsmen that we thought we needed extra batsmen. Instead, we thought that it was such a big tournament, that we had nine and two equal to eleven practice matches minimum. If we did well, it would be 13 matches. So it was possible that the pace bowler would collapse, or might need an extra bowler sometimes. We tried that many times. Since we were not batting well, that’s why we had to play eight batsmen. Otherwise, we would have played with 7 batsmen and an extra bowler could have played. So, we were never worried about this. We were confident about our batsmen. From there, maybe we let ourselves down. We could not play the way we wanted to play.
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