After having played one of the best knocks of his career, Tamim Iqbal was less than satisfied because his mammoth effort did not prove enough to win his side their first match of the Beximco ODI Series. Tamim, the 22-year-old left-hander from Chittagong, treated the English attack with some brutally beautiful shots as he accumulated 125 runs off 120 deliveries, but still ended up on the losing side as the tourists chalked up a six-wicket victory at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday.
"This was indeed one of my best knocks, the best is yet to come though. But I'm disappointed that even after scoring a big hundred we lost the game. We needed big partnerships which didn't happen. It was a good wicket for batting. Those who are in form currently like Shakib [Al Hasan], Mushfiqur [Rahim] and [Mahmudullah] Riyad didn't get many which caused our downfall."
This was Tamim's third one-day hundred in his 74-match career and his second highest and his first against a top cricketing power. The other two hundreds came against Zimbabwe and Ireland. Pleasing as it was, it left some discontent the way it ended. He started trailblazing as he raced to 50 off just 32 balls and then reached 100 in 94 deliveries. But as he batted he kept losing his allies one after another and was left to do with an awful lot which made him play an uncanny stroke that caused his downfall.
"The shot I played wasn't due to tiredness. It was rather the situation that induced me to play a shot which is not one of my original. I had to take the charge at that moment and it didn't come off."
Tamim's 125 was the only substantial score to talk about, the second best 25 came from the bat of all-rounder Naeem Islam. The others failed so badly that the Tigers were bowled with 26 balls unused. But the left-hander wasn't putting the blame on his partners:
"It was a bad day. It wasn't that they got out playing bad shots. Just the luck was not on our side. Ruing the fact that they didn't put 30 more runs to trouble the English batsmen, Tamim found reason to be optimistic from the individual performances in recent times like his hundred in this match.
English skipper Alastair Cook, captaining for the first time, too praised Tamim's knock.
"It was a fantastic innings. This was the first time I had the chance to watch him play in flesh. He played very well and it wasn't a case we bowl badly."
Cook, himself back in the one-day fold after more than a year, was happy with his score of 64 and elated at leading the side to victory in the first match.
"It was nice to score a few runs getting back to one-day cricket after so long. And it was a good performance overall. Specially the way we came back after the first fifteen overs was fantastic. We took wickets at crucial times. We wanted to keep them to 230-40 initially and that's how it ended. So, it was a good outing."
Cook heaped praise on his senior partner and vice-captain Paul Collingwood too and hoped another senior batsman Kevin Pietersen would soon get over his poor form.
"I have faith in my teammates. I'm sure the mistakes they made today [Sunday] will not be repeated in the next match."
Source: thedailystar.net
