‘We thought it might not even last a full 5 days…’: Under-fire Shan Masood breaks his silence after Pakistan’s loss to BAN

On a very flat pitch, Pakistan missed the decisive hit because they did not use a specialist spinner and instead opted for four fast bowlers. While Bangladesh made life difficult for the hosts’ batsmen with the spin twins Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan, Pakistan clearly had problems with the pacers and conceded 565 in the first innings.

Masood, however, vehemently defended the decision. Even after Shakib and Mehidy tore apart Pakistan’s batting line-up on the final day, taking seven wickets between them, Masood refused to admit that the absence of a top-order spinner was a strategic error.

“We expected the pitch to provide more support to the seamers. When we look at the pitch, we expected more,” he said at the post-match press conference, as quoted by PTI.

“If we were to play with three fast bowlers, we would push them to the limit and the spinner would bowl 25-30 overs a day, which we wanted to avoid.

“We thought that with the weather like that, it might not even last the full five days. In the end, we were wrong,” he said.

Masood defends call for explanation

After the defeat, many criticised Masood’s decision to end the first innings on 448/6, despite Mohammad Rizwan being unbeaten on 171 and Shaheen Afridi having already scored 28 runs from just 24 deliveries. However, Masood insisted that the decision was taken because Pakistan wanted to win and the team management felt the runs were sufficient.

“We wanted to win the game and hence we felt that we had enough runs to qualify for the match. But the Bangladesh batsmen showed a lot of discipline and determination in their first innings. Mushfiq and Miraz batted really well,” he added.

“We felt we could give them a run for their money with 448 runs in the fourth innings.”

“We could have used more runs, but there were also things with the ball and on the field that we could have done better to either take the lead or stay level,” he said.