Double anxiety in the doctor's room

While the Tigers were battling it out for a much-awaited trophy against India in the final of the Asia Cup, their most assured batsman, Tamim Iqbal, was receiving treatment on his left hand's injured index finger knuckle from a doctor in England.

The left-hander had sustained the knock against Sri Lanka in the opening match of that tournament and was consequently ruled out of the tournament.

However, the dashing southpaw returned home from England yesterday with the good news that he would not require surgery and that he was expected to return to cricket after two months.

But even when Tamim was busy consulting doctors in England, his mind was still in Dubai; on the final of the Asia Cup where the Tigers fought till the last ball trying to defend their 222-run total before falling agonisingly short.

"I was unable to watch the final as I was busy with the doctor but I followed the scores online. So I was not aware what exactly happened on the field," Tamim told The Daily Star upon his return to the country yesterday.

Bangladesh failed to capitalise on a brilliant start from Liton Das and Mehedi Hasan, who put on a 120-run opening stand.

"One thing I can say is that after the 120 run partnership in 20 overs, I was hoping that Mushfiqur would come at number three in that situation. He was in good form and batted the best in the Asia Cup and if he batted at number three and formed a 40-50 runs partnership then we would have been 160 for one. It may have been good but this is my personal observation. At the same time it's easy to comment from the outside and I respect what the team management thought at that time," he said.

The 29-year-old also praised Liton, who struck his maiden ODI hundred in the final, and believed that it would boost his confidence for the future.  Tamim however was surprised to see Mehedi opening the innings and said that he never imagined such an outside-the-box decision which eventually paid off.

But the question still remains, what goes wrong for Bangladesh that leads to them not winning the trophies despite reaching finals and getting so close?

"Obviously not being able to win the trophy is disappointing as we have been saying that we are doing well in the ODIs. But after losing four-five finals I think we need to reach to the next level if we want to win a trophy. When we reach the next level our skills and mentality also improve so I think we should take the next step soon to achieve that. We have to be prepared for such situations next time as, apart from in one or two finals, all the other finals were very tense games. I think we should hold our nerves for longer," said Tamim.

The Tigers returned home on Saturday with their heads held high, but skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza believes they need to overcome a mental block to lift a trophy.

"There is a mental block and to overcome the hurdle it's important for us to win a tournament. If we can do that then it's possible for us to win big tournaments in the future," said Mashrafe before praising his charges for showing strong character.