Many had anticipated that Bangladesh would go to the semifinals, but as we can see, things turned out rather differently: Mohammad Ashraful

Bangladesh performance in the current ODI World Cup 2023 under Shakib Al Hasan’s leadership has been somewhat underwhelming. With a victory over Afghanistan in their opening match of the competition, the team got off to a strong start. But they haven’t managed to win a single battle since then.

Bangladesh lost every game it played against England, New Zealand, and India in the games that followed, and former captain Mohammad Ashraful claims that this was due to insufficient preparation for the contests.

Ashraful took center stage and stated that many believed Bangladesh would make the 2023 World Cup semifinals. Their intentions, however, were derailed by the commotion leading up to the famous competition.

“Many people had predicted Bangladesh will go to the semifinals. But as we can now see, the truth is very different. Actually, the players were uneasy during the three-month upheaval building up to the World Cup, Ashraful claimed to The Daily Star.

Ashraful: Tamim has always been too sentimental.

Additionally, Ashraful discussed the Tamim Iqbal issue that was going on right up until the World Cup. When Iqbal abruptly announced his retirement in July, he later changed his mind a few hours later, but the issue really heated up when he was left off of Bangladesh’s World Cup roster.

Ashraful criticized the way the situation was handled and indicated that Tamim has always been extremely sentimental with his feelings. He also claimed that the present management handled Iqbal poorly, which is why the drama played out as it did.

Tamim has always exhibited excessive emotion. In 2010, Tamim felt a niggle or something and decided not to play in the Test match at Lord’s against England. Tamim was persuaded to participate by coach Jamie Siddons, who put his arms around his shoulders. After that, he struck back-to-back hundreds in the two Test matches, according to Ashraful.

Even Mashrafe [Bin Mortaza] was able to get the best performance out of Tamim. But Tamim was totally mishandled by the current management, which resulted in all of this controversy,” he added.