Hathurusingha takes blame for Tigers' WC debacle

Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha has taken responsibility for the side's massive failure in the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup, where the Tigers failed to live up to the expectations completely.

Coming here with high hopes of playing the semifinal for the first time, Bangladesh found them wanting and won just one victory in seven matches.

The performance that took a huge nosedive after registering a win in the first match against Afghanistan, left Bangladesh's ICC Champions Trophy ambition in limbo as well.

"I take responsibility as well as anyone in the group because we have disappointed the fans and we disappointed ourselves as well. We didn't play our best cricket but the thing is nothing has changed from the first game to now," Hathurusingha said in Delhi.

Bangladesh will take on Sri Lanka at Arun Jaitley Stadium on Monday in a bid to keep their Champions Trophy hopes alive.

Hathurusingha who was highly successful in his first stint with Bangladesh, taking the side into the quarterfinal of the 2015 World Cup, now saw the other sides of the coin in his second stint.

He said Bangladesh indeed let themselves down due to high expectations.

"Only [what] has changed is what's going through between our ears. Our skills haven't gone anywhere. So, I think we put ourselves down by having high expectations.

That's the only thing that we can think of because as you rightly said, we haven't played our best cricket or what we were capable of or we played before coming into the World Cup. So, in that sense, it's we all need to look at mirrors and see what went wrong," he added.

Also, the loss of form of so many players simultaneously was key in the side's dismal performance, he said.

There was speculation that the likes of Najmul Hossain Shanto, Towhid Hridoy, and Tanzid Hasan Tamim couldn't take the pressure of playing on the big stage, that too with high hopes.

"I'm speculating if I say yes or no, I don't know, to be honest. The only thing you can think of is, it's a high expectations from everyone because as players, we all want to perform on the biggest stage. That's, as you said, it's that kind of expectation. It can be pressure, can be that you're put in a little bit, yeah, trying to do too much," Hathurusingha said.

Despite winning three matches in the last World Cup, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) considered it a failure and the then-head coach Steve Rhodes was forced to step down. There is wide speculation that Hathurusingha will have to face the same fate even though he was contracted until 2024.

The BCB would have to compensate hugely should they want to sack him.

When asked about his future as Bangladesh coach, Hathurusingha pushed the ball to the BCB's court by saying: "It's not up to me. It just has to be decided by the board."

He also tried to defend himself by saying that he didn't get enough time ahead of the World Cup to regroup the side.

"You know, I started seven months ago, so I had seven months. And then there are certain things beyond my control happening in between as well - all these things I don't think are the right forum or time for me to think or discuss. At the moment my focus is this game, how we can win the next game," he added.

"I'm only 7 months into the job - There's not much I can do within seven months with what I have. What I did was just take the team from where the team was and make sure that they were prepared for this actually it's my work has to start after this because it's World Cup is separating to prepare, and then it's taking the team forward. It is a very different challenge."

"My biggest challenge at the moment is keeping that environment as stress-free as possible from every angle for them to help them perform to their best ability."

Hathurusingha also stood by the comment of playing in the semifinal.

"It's not a wrong comment because we all want to do well. We have a high hope and we have the expectation to do well and we thought that we were capable of doing but then we couldn't achieve so it's not a wrong comment."

/KN/