'Winning is the minimum'

It was fairly obvious that the tour was ending. South Africa's T20I captain had said before the first match that Bangladesh may have one foot on the plane and that may be an advantage for the home side, but the promise of home comforts after an arduous tour may have rejuvenated the Tigers. Yesterday that lightness of spirit was apparent during Bangladesh's training and warm-ups at Senwes Park in Potchefstroom, the venue where it all started with a 333-run defeat in the first Test.

Today they will play the last match of the tour when they take on South Africa in the second T20I and it will be one final shot at getting a win next to their name as they have lost all six international matches so far on tour. The levity -- the players were laughing and joking while playing a warm-up football game with two in the middle of the circle chasing the ball and having to do push-ups when 10 passes were completed -- probably had as much to do with the fact that they gave South Africa a run for their money in the first T20I, the first show of real fight on the tour.

Before the first match, T20I skipper Shakib Al Hasan talked about the aim being to show fight and play like a team, but when asked yesterday about what he would be happy with, he smiled broadly, as if wondering about the legitimacy of the question.

“What else is there but winning,” he laughed and said. “The minimum is to win, I don't see much beyond that.”

Despite the 20-run loss in the first game in Potchefstroom, the new skipper seemed happy with the performance -- an understandable reaction given the huge margins of defeat in the preceding games.

“Everything went well but if we played better, we would have had a chance of winning. We played with an extra bowler so that we could stop them around 180,” he said. “We had the confidence that our batsmen could chase that total on that pitch. I thought we gave 10-15 extra runs, and we could have fielded better. But if we can improve in certain areas, we will be able to play a good game.”

He also admitted that losing two quick wickets -- those of seniors Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah Riyad to big shots -- after Soumya Sarkar had provided a good platform for the chase of 196 was not the ideal approach.

“We could have been a bit sensible during that time, not lose wickets for about 4-5 overs. But you have to take risk to get runs. I think we need to find the right balance in our batting -- take risks, score runs but not lose wickets.

“We play T20s once in a while so it takes a bit of time to adjust to the format in the first match. The moment you feel like you have got the measure of it, you go into a six-month break. But most teams don't play more than one or two T20s in a series in any case. So this is not an excuse; when you are out there you have to try to win.”

He added that while the pitch here is a little slower than most in the country, it looked like being another belter of a wicket and they will have to score at least 180 or keep South Africa within that total if they want to win.

The feeling yesterday was one of positivity, and foot on the plane or not, the Tigers finally seem to be having fun, which might be the right recipe to end on a high.