[al Furqaan]

My pre-tournament prediciton was that we'd win 3-5 games (3 if we played really poorly, 5 if we exceeded expectations, with 4 being a "par" performance).

Assuming that we'd have beaten Sri Lanka, we would have finished with exactly 4 wins.

But lets be frank, in this format, only the best 4 sides will make it to the semifinals and Bangladesh aren't amongst the top 4 sides. The reason are many (batting while strong, still tends to choke like against Pakistan), fielding is mediocre at best, and most importantly, our bowling is too unidimensional.

Obviously its disappointing that we couldn't beat Pakistan. Again disappointing that we came within 30 runs of beating India, but were still comfortably beaten. Further frustrating that batsmen did their jobs and scored 333 but we lost to Australia.

That having been said, I think luck plays a factor. In all of our critical must-win games, we had to chase. Chasing was very difficult at this world cup. 27 games were won by the team batting 1st and only 14 won by teams chasing. That is almost a 2-1 ratio.

If you ignore matches against the 3 weakest sides, Afghanistan, WI, and Sri Lanka (finished 6th only because of 2 rain outs), then the results are even more stark. 16 wins for the team batting 1st, and only 4 for the teams chasing a target. That is a 4-1 ratio.

This meant it was very much a "set a target" tournament, and Bangladesh were already at a disadvantage when they lost the toss against Australia, India, and Pakistan. All 3 could have possibly been won, given the batting form we had.

Further look at the highest successful chases in this world cup:

Bangladesh 322 (vs weak WI bowling attack)
India 265 (vs weak SL bowling attack)
New Zealand 245 (vs weak BD bowling attack)
New Zealand 242 (vs SA)
Pakistan 238 (vs NZ)

The highest successful chase against a good bowling attack was only 242 by NZ and 238 by Pakistan. This was very much a tournament where if you scored 250+, you would most likely defend it and win.