Captain Mohammad Mahmudullah says Bangladesh didn't handle the difficult Lahore pitch as they suffered a T20 defeat against Pakistan.
Bangladesh are taking on Pakistan in three T20Is but fell behind in the series after the opening encounter.
Both teams are using the games as preparation for the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia later this year.
Bangladesh are considered 76.00 (75/1) outsiders with 10Cric to win the tournament. Pakistan can be backed at 12.00 (11/1) with the same firm.
Mahmudullah thinks pitch didn’t help Bangladesh
Bangladesh could only post 141 from their innings, which the home side chased down in the final over.
However, the skipper wasn’t too pleased with how the pitch played in Lahore.
He said: “I expected a little bit better from the wicket because once the ball got older, we found it difficult to score runs. The ball did not come on to the bat as we expected.
“It was difficult for the later batters to come and hit straight away. Once the ball got old, it was difficult to bat. The ball was holding on the wicket and the batsmen struggled to get underneath. We were short by a good 10-15 runs.”
On the overall performance of his side, Mahmudullah added: “I believe the way we batted in the powerplay was spot on. Tamim and Naim batted quite well. But as the ball kept losing its shine, it was getting difficult.
“In the middle overs, we lost two wickets in an over. From that point onwards, if we were to drag the run-rate higher, we would have needed some big overs which yielded some 15-17 runs.
“I think that was one of the areas which we lacked in. Credit goes to the Pakistani bowlers as well. They nailed their yorkers and mixed up their pace quite well. We will keep these things in mind and try to get better in the next game.”
Bangladesh fielding comes under the spotlight
Despite the positives, one area the captain thinks let his team down was in the field.
“Though bowlers bowled well, we gave away quite a few easy boundaries,” he said.
“We also let ourselves down in the fielding department. We missed a few chances, dropped a few catches and let go of a couple of run out chances.
“If you look at our field-setting, sometimes it was attacking and sometimes we held up a bit and this is due to the nature of the format which mandates flexibility in strategy. But in the end, I feel we were 10-15 runs short which forced us to not attack as much as we liked to. These are the things we need to find out, sit-together and look into.”
