India’s fall was down to swinging and seaming conditions at the picturesque venue surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and Hathurusinghe said before Bangladesh’s game against Afghanistan on Saturday they will take a late call on their playing side.
“The wickets look really good for one-day cricket. I thought very firm wicket, nice covering of grass,” Hathurusinghe said in a press conference. “I think it’s a really good sporting wicket.
“I’m expecting some high scoring on this ground. The combination we will decide tomorrow morning and see the wicket again, because the curator said he’ll do a little bit of work today as well on that wicket.”
Hathurusinghe understands it is still early days in the showpiece tournament but said Bangladesh have set themselves the target of reaching the semi-finals and backed the team to achieve that goal.
The South Asian side’s best performance in the World Cup was a quarter-final appearance in 2015 and reaching the Super Eights in 2007. “Yeah, we all want to win the World Cup… if we win four-five games, we give ourselves a chance to get to the semi-final – that is our first aim,” Hathurusinghe said. “I think we have a good enough team to do that.”
Afghanistan lost to Bangladesh the last time the teams faced off in the Asia Cup last month, but skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi can draw confidence from a 2-1 series win over them earlier in the year.
“We’ve played a lot with each other,” Shahidi said.
“Sometimes we won, sometimes they won. In the Asia Cup, they beat us in the last game that we played with them – but we are totally ready here.
“We have had meetings, we prepare ourselves and we know them very well, so we will play accordingly and we will try our best as a team to bounce back in this game against them.”
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