‘We were waiting, wanted India to know how it feels: Bangladesh U19 bowler on ‘dirty’ behaviour after World Cup final – cricket

Bangladesh defeated India in the U19 World Cup final to clinch their maiden ICC trophy, but the massive victory was marred by a few aggressive exchanges after the match between players from both the teams. Two Indians — Akash Singh and Ravi Bishnoi — and three Bangladeshi players — Md Towhid Hridoy, Shamim Hossain and Rakibul Hasan — were found guilty of breaching the ICC Code of Conduct after a few players from both the sides nearly came to blows after Bangladesh beat India by three wickets to win their maiden U-19 World Cup title.

Bangladesh U19 star bowler Shoriful Islam opened up on the post-match reactions and said the behaviour displayed by the players was due to the growing rivalry between the two teams.

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“Actually, we lost two close matches against them in the past. One was the Asia Cup semifinal [in 2018] and the other was a [Asia Cup] final [in 2019]. I can’t describe what those defeats felt like. Before taking the field for the final, all I could think about was what they did after winning and how we felt after losing. So, we didn’t want things to turn out as they did before. We wanted to do our best and fight with all our strength till the last ball,” he was quoted saying by Daily Star.

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He added: “Firstly, we felt really bad. We lost at our home to them, in Dhaka, by one run (Asia Cup final 2019). They celebrated wildly in front of us back then and we couldn’t say anything. We were waiting for the day we would meet them in a final again.”

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When questioned if he had ‘revenge’ on his mind, Islam said: “Yeah (laughs). We got the chance. What I wanted was to give it our all. Then they would know what it is like when someone celebrates in front of you like that after you’ve lost.”

Some of the Bangaladeshi players got carried away with their celebration after their historic win over India in the final. While their captain Akbar Ali apologised for the “unfortunate incident”, his Indian counterpart Priyam Garg felt the episode should not have happened.

(With PTI inputs)