Junior Tigers face South Africa in quarters today
Bangladesh U-19 National Cricket Team vows to come all guns blazing as they take on South Africa in the Super League Quarter-final-3 of the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup at the Potchefstroom in South Africa on Thursday.
The victory in the match would help them seal the semi-final of the tournament.
The Junior Tigers’ highest success in the Youth World Cup is to achieve the third place in 2016 tournament beating West Indies by three wickets when Mehedi Hasan Miraz led the side in the tournament, hosted by Bangladesh.
Bangladesh came in South Africa with an aim to surpass the previous result and thing went well until the last game against Pakistan. The Bangladeshi youth beat Zimbabwe by nine wickets through D/L method before crushing Scotland by seven wickets.
But they were reduced to 106-9 against Pakistan in the last group match. Only the rain saved them from ultimate blushes as the match was washed out, helping Bangladesh to be the group champion by virtue of net-run-rate.
“We played badly against Pakistan and our batting was not up to the mark. We played some wretched shots,” Bangladesh U-19 captain Akbar Ali said in Potchefstroom ahead of the crucial game.
“But we would try to reduce the number of mistakes when we take on South Africa. We have given full concentration on batting. We have the plan to come up with tight bowling in the first and last power-play. Our target is to maintain our line and length,” he added.
Even though South Africa lost their group phase game to Afghanistan before beating the UAE and Canada to seal the super league quarterfinal, Akbar thinks that the match won’t be easier for them. Bangladesh also has some injury concern with fast bowler Mrittunjoy Chowdhury ruling out from the tournament while off-spinner Shamim Hasan still struggling to recover from the injury.
