"Winning the World Cup is my ultimate goal": Shakib confident ahead of the mega event

Ace all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan is confident of qualifying for the knockout stage despite having a poor World Cup record. In an interview with Sportskeeda, Shakib also stated that his ultimate goal is to win the tournament. 

"We are capable of qualifying for the knockout stage. Our World Cup journey so far hasn't been that great. But we have now found a formula of how to win matches. The recent series wins will boost our confidence," Shakib said.

The all-rounder mentioned that not playing enough competitive T20 matches is the prime reason why Bangladesh struggle in this form of the game. "We haven't been successful because we never played enough T20s, especially domestic tournaments. Only a handful of our players play IPL, CPL, and PSL but in general, we couldn't play enough competitive T20 matches. Yes, we have BPL but it's not consistently happening because of Covid and other issues. But now that we are playing a lot of T20 matches now, this will help us immensely to improve our mindset," said Shakib. 

Shakib was in stupendous form when Bangladesh played an ICC event last time. He wants to emulate that performance although the challenges in this format are different. He said, "I will try my best to repeat my 2019 World Cup performance. Of course, the format is different and the challenges will also be so. But my ultimate goal is to win an ICC event for Bangladesh."

"I don't have a personal goal. I always want to contribute to the team's success in whichever way I can. And as I said, winning the tournament is the ultimate goal. There are three back-to-back ICC events and we can at least fancy winning one of those," Shakib concluded.