‘We are still positive,’ assured Mahmudullah Riyad after losing the second Test against Sri Lanka.

After almost three years, Bangladesh have lost a bilateral Test series at home. After a drawn Test in Chittagong, the final face-off between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh was held in Dhaka. The Tigers’ failure to produce enough runs in both innings resulted in Sri Lanka winning the match in three days.

Bangladesh lost their last 5 wickets in the 1st innings while adding only 3 runs to the total. In the 2nd innings, they lost the same amount of wickets in the end; this time, scoring 23 runs.

Regarding the batting collapse, Mahmudullah Riyad said: “It is disappointing [the batting collapse]. All of us knew that we would get a result on this wicket. Since we knew that it was a spinner-friendly track, we should have batted better in the first innings. Had we made more than 200 runs in the first innings, we could have had a better chance since chasing 340 on this track puts too much pressure.

“Our gameplan was to have a positive intent. We had to show intent because there could be trouble without it. Since the wicket was doing too much for the bowlers, defending too much would have given bowlers an opportunity [to inflict damage]. In this regard, they maintained putting pressure on us.”

After a series of disappointing performances, Sabbir Rahman was still a part of the playing XI in both Tests. However, Mahmudullah backed the decision of including him in the team instead of Mosaddek Hossain.

“The reason behind picking up Sabbir [instead of Mosaddek Hossain] was that he plays the spinners well. And if there is no attacking approach in this wicket, the chances [of winning] reduce.”

The pitch in the Dhaka Test was significantly different to the one in Chittagong. Sri Lanka Dinesh Chandimal expressed his surprise over Bangladesh making a spin-friendly track when Sri Lanka had the more experienced spinners. Mahmudullah, however, was content with the gamble.

“Cricket is like gambling. We knew that their spin department is excellent, but our spinners also did well. I knew that it would be a challenge for the batsmen, but we had faith that they would be up for it. They, however, couldn’t perform as expected,,

‘The pitch in Chittagong was a batting-friendly track, our batsmen did well there. This is why we wanted a turning track because we trust in our batters along with the spinners. But unfortunately, our batsmen couldn’t perform and that’s why this happened.

‘Our batsmen have done well in foreign conditions, so we have to gamble like this on home turfs or else we won’t improve our game.’

Bangladesh have always failed to impress when it comes to fielding in the slip. They missed a number of catches against Sri Lanka as well.

“Richard [Pybus] is our fielding coach and he always focuses on slip fielding. In fact, there is different session for the slip fielders. The slip area is a very difficult place to field, but we tried our best to take the chances, but unfortunately we couldn’t,” Mahmudullah explained.

While Sri Lanka scored 220-odd runs in both innings, Bangladesh could not manage to go past 125 on both occasions. As a result, the island nation claimed a 215-run victory over the hosts.

The Bangladesh skipper stated: “The Sri Lankan bowlers bowled very tightly and we had to take risks in order to score runs off them. Our bowlers, however, gave one bad ball in almost every over. This actually took the pressure off them.”