Mashrafe Bin Mortaza

As the Tigers head towards their first training session for the quarter finals at the Melbourne Cricket Ground today, skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza had a clear message in store for them. He expects his players to forget their previous achievements in the tournament and focus solely on the game against India.

"The players were advised to enjoy their break without cricket. Everybody is tired because of excessive travelling. We have three days in our hand before the match [March 19] and in my opinion our main challenge would be to check our excitement.

"Everybody is excited as we are going to play in the knockout stage for the first time. But it's been since we secured that achievement; so as a professional team we have to focus on the match ahead," Mashrafe said.

"We have got another chance and we have to take it with both hands.  We have to show the world that we are hungry for more success and I am very confident with my team. We are very capable of taking our team to another new height," the confident captain added.

Despite making it through to the knock out stages, the skipper admitted that they had a rough time at the beginning of the competition. However, the pressure subsided after the crucial wins against Afghanistan and Scotland.

"There were expectations regarding our chance to qualify into the quarterfinals but in reality this was not so easy. We worked hard during training and despite the defeats in the practice matches we didn't lose our confidence, which was the key behind our success," explained Mashrafe.

The Bangladesh skipper still believes that there are still a number of areas that the Tigers need to improve in; especially the opening aspect, an area where the Tigers have failed in throughout the competition.

"Our performance in the first round was decent but it could have been much better had we won the last match against New Zealand. We were in a position to win the match. But what has happened has happened.

"I know for the openers it's quite difficult to survive against the new balls from both ends. But still if we get a start the total scenario will change as our middle order has so far done a decent job. Our batting has been fantastic, I can bet that nobody expected such a performance from us with the bat. But it will be more effective if our openers play well," explained the captain.

He further hoped that his bowlers could restrict India below a total of 300.

"Teams like Australia, South Africa and India have all conceded huge scores, so the scenario is difficult. But we have to try to restrict our opponents below 300 runs. I think in the next three days we will be able to fine tune our bowling," he hoped, adding that every team in the knock out stage had an equal chance to reach the semi-final.

Mashrafe had a few special words reserved for Mahmudullah Riyad as well.

"We promoted him to number four because we were confident about him. But honestly speaking nobody expected him to do what he did. I am looking for a bigger achievement from him after seeing the way he batted in the tournament."