Tamim lauds lower-order batsmen
Bangladesh picked up their 3rd successive win in the tri-nation series by defeating Zimbabwe by 91 runs on Tuesday. Bangladesh scored 216 runs and restricted Zimbabwe to a score of 125/10. This was the 4th lowest total defended by Bangladesh.
After an important partnership of 106 runs from Shakib Al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal, the last 3 batsmen of Bangladesh added 47 runs to the total in the last 8 overs. The fine batting display by the tailenders saw their total go past 200 runs.
Tamim Iqbal became the first Bangladeshi batsman to reach 6000 ODI runs. He has also gone past the landmark of 11000 international runs in the previous match.
The opening batsman received the Man of the Match award for his brilliant knock of 76 runs. This was his 3rd consecutive century in the tournament. However, the opener has expressed his disappointment on missing out a hundred.
Tamim also heaped praise on the lower-order batsmen and gave credit to the team management for it. He was aware of the total that would be difficult to chase.
The 28-year-old reportedly said, "I have to give credit [to] the team management here again because, in the last month and a half, the amount of batting time the lower-order batsmen were given, only those who saw it closely would know.
"They batted a lot and today No. 9, 10 and 11 scored 50 runs. So that made the difference in today's game.
"I knew that anything over 200 would be difficult, because as I said the wicket was difficult to bat on, especially against the spinners and then there was seam movement for the fast bowlers,"
"Maybe the time was wrong to attack. A legspinner was bowling and I am a leftie, so the chances are higher for me to succeed against him. I was targeting him for quite some time, but we kept losing wickets regularly, such as Mushfiqur [Rahim] and Riyad bhai [Mahmudullah]," Tamim added.
"I was targeting those overs, thinking that it will be good if I can hit him for one or two [boundaries]. Even if I had gotten out while Mushfiq was there, that would have been better because we would have had five or six batsmen. So if I had tried to build a partnership for five overs and then tried that shot, it would have been better.
Tamim Iqbal has scored 41 half-centuries in ODIs. His conversion rate of the fifties into hundreds is 18.37% and he has scored 9 centuries throughout his ODI career. His conversion rate is poor compared to many other contemporary openers.
Tamim said, "Yes, it would have been good if I scored a century, of course. I came very close in the last two matches and it is always disappointing not to be able to, you know that. I had an opportunity today; I didn't need to do anything special if I batted another six-seven overs I could have got a hundred."
