Bashar says his run-out was 'pathetic'

Habibul Bashar, the Bangladesh captain, has said that his run-out in the second innings was the most 'pathetic' episode of his career and admitted that Bangladesh were yet to learn how to sustain their good performance in the second innings.

Bangladesh ended the third day on 124 for 5 with an overall lead of 282 but were dismissed for 148 on the fourth morning. "It could have been a different story after the end of the fourth day's play if we had some more second-innings runs on the board. Actually we are yet to get used to with this kind of situation," Bashar told The Daily Star. "The way I was run out in the second innings was the most pathetic episode of my whole career. There is no excuse to the way I got out. It gave us a lesson that one mistake can snatch all your initiatives away when playing against a team like Australia."

He said that the team was disappointed by their weak batting performance but remained optimistic of their chances on the fifth day. "Actually the guys were upset with the second-innings performance. But I think that the match is still not over," said Bashar. "If we can pick one or two early wickets on the fifth day, things can be different than what you are now seeing."

Bashar's optimism was shared by Dav Whatmore, the Bangladesh coach. "It's still evenly poised. What we need to do is get some quick wickets. Getting wickets is the key here and what is important is that we get them early rather than anything else," said Whatmore. "If the wicket starts playing up then we definitely have a chance. What was disappointing for me was that the wicket on the fourth day behaved a little too nicely given the circumstances. "We obviously wanted the wicket to play a bit more. But as it was, it didn't work out for us. But we still had 306 runs on the board and it's still a pretty good fourth-innings total to defend, a good position to be in but what was disappointing was that the wicket did not help as much as we had thought."

In spite of a poor batting performance in the second innings, Whatmore lauded Bangladesh's effort. "If you told this to me on Sunday that we would be here fighting it out on Thursday then yeah I would say we have done well. We stuck at it which is important. I am pleased and proud of the boys. They have done well and what's also important is that we got some reward out of it. We have done some really good things in this game, definitely, but we could have done a bit better especially in the second innings."