Chief selector urges to tone down expectation for T20 World Cup

Dhaka, 14 May - Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, the chairman of the Bangladesh national team selection panel, urged all to tone down their expectation for the T20 World Cup, stating that the team has not yet reached a stage to set a bigger goal.

"We hope we'll overcome the hurdle of first round. If we can move to the second round, we will set our next goal," Ashraf, the former national captain who is popularly known as Lipu, said.

"In group phase, we'll play the team like South African and Sri Lanka. We can expect to win against Sri Lanka but Sri Lanka also knew that can beat us. So the two teams will be in pressure. And practically South Africa are miles ahead of us. We need to play extremely better than them or they need to play extremely poor if we want to win this game. The next two game against Nepal and Netherlands which we hope to win."

A few days ago, Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto also urged the fans to keep their expectation low. Ashraf believes Shanto wants to make it understand all that they would like to take it match by match rather expecting too much. 

"There is a huge craze for cricket in our country. Even when we didn't play at the big events, we saw packed stadium. I have been noticing it since 1997. 

That craze has now spread widely. Maybe the captain said it in that light. He wanted every to refrain from expecting too much," he said. 

"In T20 cricket, we haven't reached that stage yet where you can expect the team to reach in the semifinal. What he means is to go ahead step by step."

Bangladesh's best result came in the T20 World Cup in 2022 when they won two matches in Super 12 phase. They played well against India but eventually lost the game by 5 runs on DLS method.