Mortaza upbeat about team’s chances of beating India

Bangladesh ODI skipper Mashrafe Mortaza says they are going into the three-match series opener with the belief that they have the wherewithal to beat India in Thursday’s game.

Mortaza said his side has gone from strength-to-strength in the last few years and that gives them the confidence of playing hard against <g data-gr-id="33">much fancied</g> rival like India.

“I firmly believe India are favourites but when we get on the field, we don’t think who is favorite or who is not. I hope we can play our best cricket. After the 2007 World Cup, we started to believe that we can beat any team,” Mortaza said on the eve of the series-opener.

“We never lost our mental strength despite losing matches. Of course, if we are playing against a higher-ranked team they will be the favourites but we don’t think that we can’t beat them,” Mortaza added.

He said the recent-past records are encouraging for them and all they need is to fire in unison.

“Bangladesh is one of the teams doing well in ODIs right now apart from Australia, England, India and New Zealand. I have told the boys to look at the statistics that we are not far behind any of these teams.

“Everyone believes in themselves. We have to show it on the field, but this is no pressure. One or two could have a bad time but if many of us are in form, we can have a good time,” he said. 

The skipper wants his players to adopt the one-match-at-one-time approach.

“We should take it match by <g data-gr-id="32">match</g> which is more important for us. We have to do well and then think about the next game and so forth. 

We have to learn how to deal with such pressure too. We are improving so we must handle this sort of pressure.