There were a lot of expectations from Bangladesh cricketers when they travelled to South Africa for two Test matches, three ODIs and two T20 internationals. However, the hapless Tigers failed to perform to their full potential and ended up losing all games in all formats.
Everyone expected the visitors to be competitive and perform as they did at home. However, things did not go as per plan as injuries to ace players Tamim Iqbal and Mustafizur Rahman made the situation worse.
T20 captain Shakib Al Hasan felt that the players' inability to recover from the loss in previous matches led to their underperformance in the shortest format of the game.
According to him, learning from the mistakes of a lost game and taking positives from those should have been the attitude.
Opener Soumya Sarkar felt that the lack of contribution from middle order and poor performance from the bowlers played a role in their defeats. He was also disappointed with himself for not converting his small starts to big scores.
ODI skipper Mashrafe Mortaza talked about their weak bowling performance and felt that the bowlers were making the same mistakes repeatedly and not learning from the previous errors.
Besides, he thought that the injuries to key players were another issue that affected them as they were not able to field their best starting XI.
Fans, however, were disappointed with the performance of the Tigers. They lashed out their anger on social media and players like Mushfiqur Rahim, skipper of the Test team, and Imrul Kayes received criticism in particular. The former was criticised for displaying weak leadership on the field and decision-making while the latter for his continued struggle with the bat.
Bangladesh's struggle with overseas form has been an issue for a long time.
While the players will be busy playing BPL 2017, the team management needs to take a few decisions and start thinking about their next tour afresh.
