Mushfiqur targets improvement

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Bangladesh may have lost by 208 runs against India after giving up a sizeable first innings lead but skipper Mushfiqur Rahim feels the difference between the sides wasn’t that great.

The Tigers skipper feels if they could have made the most of their chances while India were piling on the runs in the first innings they would have been far more competitive.

Mushfiqur scored a century in the Tiger’s first innings after a middle-order collapse left the lower order with a lot to do but the way the tail responded would be a boost to the Tigers with Mehedi Hasan recording a maiden Test fifty and sharing an 87 run partnership with the skipper.

Mushfiqur told Ravi Shastri at the post-match presentation:  “Obviously, I thought, in the first innings we created a lot of opportunities with the bowling. If we had restricted India to 550 or 600, we could have had a chance.”

The skipper admitted that Bangladesh were a little bit outgunned by India, whose seamers all came to the party to support Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja who are ranked number one and two in the world among Test bowlers.

Mushfiqur added:”It’s quite tough out there in the second innings, India have a lot of options, not only among the spinners but the fast bowlers as well. Hopefully we learn from this and come up with better performance.”

Despite the loss the captain is proud of his team’s fight and Bangladesh certainly didn’t embarrass themselves in what was their first ever Test in India: “I’m really proud of the boys, even the tail-enders showed really good character.”

The captain feels improving on a few little things will go a long way towards his team being able to challenge the best teams in world cricket.

He concluded: “Little things are what we need to improve on. Couple of matches coming up in Sri Lanka. Hopefully we capitalise there. We batted more than 100 overs each innings, and Mehedi batted and bowled well. Taijul bowled well. But I think our fielding let us down. If we can compete for five days, we can push the big boys”

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