Mahmudullah aims to maintain ascendancy after Zimbabwe clean-sweep

After a convincing win in the one-off Test, Bangladesh stormed past Zimbabwe in each of the three ODIs and two T20Is. The victories act as a huge confidence booster to the side that had been comprehensively beaten in the T20I series and in the first of the two Tests against Pakistan last month.

Mahmudullah viewed the triumph as a turning point for his side and laid emphasis on carrying the right attitude and mindset going forward.

"For us, playing good cricket as well as dominating against the opponent was equally important because we were not doing well in recent times," Mahmudullah said after his team's nine-wicket win in the second T20I on Wednesday, 11 March. "This series was a turning point for us. We were favourites in every series - whether it's Test, ODI or T20I. Many a times it happens that you lose focus after you win the first game. So playing with that kind of focus was very important.

"I think the attitude [going forward is important]. First comes the attitude and then the performance. I think the mindset and the hunger that everyone showed, was very important."

Liton Das, the opener stood out as Bangladesh's star performer in their glorious run, leading the run-scoring charts in both ODIs and T20Is. The experienced campaigners Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar and Mustafizur Rahman too showed signs of great form. Mahmudullah reiterated that his team always had the potential to excel and believed that the recent performances could act as a motivating factor when they take on more challenging opponents in future.

"When we went to Pakistan, we had a discussion about why we were playing like this," said the 34-year-old. "Everyone thinks that we are a better team and we can give better performances. There was no doubt about this. However, we were short of something. For that reason, we were focused more on this series with these things from the beginning. These are the positives for us and we need to keep that in mind in the future that we can play such teams with dominance.

Maybe today we got the result we were looking for but in the next series, we may not get that. But we have to believe that we can give such performances. If we move away from here, it will be difficult for us to build up. Our next goal is to have consistent performances against the big teams or the so-called big teams."