Bangladesh men’s team director Khaled Mahmud slammed the national side for their T20I series loss to Zimbabwe. The former Test captain named the defeat a ‘disgrace’ and felt that Bangladesh should have won it. Bangladesh went down by 17 runs in the first T20I and then they bounced back to equal the series with a seven-wicket win in the second as well. The tourists then held the upper hand for the most part in the third T20I before Ryan Burl’s knock helped his side.

Mahmud has also said that he never expected Bangladesh to lose the series as well. The veteran has also observed that Bangladesh’s batters didn’t even try to reach to the required rate of 10 or 12 and instead batted to save their spots as well.

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Mahmud said, as quoted by ESPN Cricinfo: “I am very disappointed, I didn’t expect to lose to Zimbabwe. We are a better team than them. I would call it a disgrace. I won’t give any excuses. We should have won the T20I series. Losing was quite unusual. When we needed 10 or 12 runs an over, we were getting six or seven every over. Nobody even tried to hit a six. Everyone was playing for ones and twos. What was that? They batted like trying to protect their place, make enough runs so that they don’t lose their place.”

It’s worth mentioning that Bangladesh reduced Zimbabwe to 67-6 at one stage before Burl slammed 34 runs in an over off Nasum Ahmed. His 28-ball 54, consisting of two fours and six sixes, took the hosts to 156.

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“When you are chasing 157, you can’t win a game by batting at 90 or 110 strike rate. Someone had to go after the bowling. Look at their (Burl and Jongwe) strike rate. They changed the complexion of the game. You can’t expect Litton Das to score every day. Whether it was Afif or Shanto, I didn’t see anyone batting aggressively. If you can’t pull a short ball for six, that’s going to be a problem,” Khaled Mahmud concluded.