'Unfortunately, cricket is an 11-man game'

After winning the first match, Dhaka ended the BPL losing 11 consecutive matches. No team in the world has the record of losing so many matches in a franchise league season. But Shariful Islam, the pacer of that team, has taken two-three wickets in almost every match! Finished the tournament with a maximum of 22 wickets in 12 matches so far. This is also the record for most wickets taken by a pacer in a BPL season. But the poor performance of the team allowed him to celebrate that joy! After returning to Dhaka from Chittagong yesterday, Shariful spoke to Prothom Alo about the mixed experience of this year's BPL.

Your team has lost 11 matches in a row but your performance is good. What did you learn from BPL?
Shariful Islam: Cricket is a team sport. You see that nothing great can be accomplished by individual performance. Even if we do well individually, we are at the bottom. This is the biggest example. If none of us were in the top five, everyone would make a small contribution and we would win the match; But then it will be better. There's really nothing wrong with playing as a team. Team performance is more important than individual performance.

Did you think you will get 22 wickets in 12 matches?
Shariful: I didn't think so. Had I reached the last four, I would have taken more wickets. Could have been more wickets. The idea was that since we started with a hat-trick in the first match, taking one or two every match would make it more than 20 wickets. If we make the playoffs, it will be 22-23. Such was the thought.