While the on field incident during the Bangladesh’s match against Sri Lanka in the Nidahas Trophy drew much attention, specially because of Shakib Al Hasan’s behaviour Courtney Walsh who was there as head coach of the team said the captain’s passion for the game made him bit worried as the umpiring decision went against them.

Shakib Al Hasan waved his players back after the umpire’s denial to call a no ball that would give Bangladesh a free hit and. Substitute fielder Nurul Hasan Sohan engaged in verbal spat with Sri Lanka’s Thisara who was bowling the last over in a match that turned out to be virtual semi-final. While Sohan and Perera were in verbal brawl, Shakib was seen gesturing his players to return to the dressing room which meant a forfeit of the game.

Shakib and Sohan then earned demerit point and slapped with financial fine but the whole Bangladesh team was criticized to take step to forfeit the game.

However Walsh stood by his charges, saying, “These things happen in the heat of the moment. Obviously it had nothing to do with the players. It was an error of the umpires. Probably the crowd misunderstood what had happened. We thought we got a free-hit because of the no-ball. It wasn’t warranted what we did. It shows how passionate they are about the game but there were a lot of rules and regulations that you don’t want to go beyond.”

 “I keep telling them that we need to show controlled aggression. We spoke about it after the game. An error was made but we couldn’t handle it as well as we could have.