Nasum credits Herath for impressive showing against New Zealand

Leading into the T20 World Cup, Bangladesh have a rising spinner in their ranks. Nasum Ahmed has played 13 T20Is and has 17 wickets at an average of 15 and an economy of 6.07. While most of Nasum's wickets have come against Australia and New Zealand in extremely spin-friendly conditions, the spinner has stressed he's reaping rewards of working with Rangana Herath.

Former Sri Lanka spinner, Herath, has been working with the Bangladesh bowlers as a spin consultant. "Herath also works personally with me, we share a lot of things," Nasum said after returning figures of 4-0-10-4 and helping Bangladesh seal a maiden series win over New Zealand.

"Yesterday during practice he told me that it would be better if I bowled a little slower. So I practised that yesterday and tried to apply that today. I tried to bowl on the seam, tried a few cross seam deliveries. I tried to bowl on a good spot as the wicket had turn. I am now used to bowling in the powerplay. I am not asked to bring a wicket when handed the ball. I am just asked to bowl like myself and I try to give away few runs and as many dot balls as possible in the powerplay."

Nasum stressed the faith shown by the team management has helped him gain confidence at the international level. "I am getting a lot of support from the team management, captain, the seniors are supporting me. This is helping my confidence and that is why I have been doing well," he pointed out.

"My debut was in New Zealand but we could not win a match there. Here, in our home conditions, we confirmed our series win today. It feels really great to win the series and I am very happy because I performed."

Meanwhile, New Zealand interim head coach Glenn Pocknall felt his side fell short by about 10-15 runs for a par score. "The comms that were coming back probably a quarter of way through the innings [was] if we can get to a 100-110, then we will be right in the game, so to take it to the last over it proved right having more runs on the board," he revealed.

"Even though we were ten runs short, we felt that we could defend 93. We didn't in the end, but we certainly went into that bowling innings confident because it was a challenging wicket to bat on. But, I guess we lost three wickets maybe in a space of ten balls, and that was our middle order, so it was very hard to resurrect the innings after that."

Pocknall, however, stressed the growth shown by Ajaz Patel, Rachin Ravindra and Will Young will hold them in good stead. "Ajaz and Rachin, I think, between them they went for 17 runs off eight overs. So, Bangladesh clearly had a plan to see those two off and maybe target the other bowlers. So, that's credit to those two bowlers and they performed very well in these conditions," he said.

"Also, brilliant knock from Young. You know he's shown so much growth over this tour so far and form him to put it all together and get us to a great total, was so pleasing for him to see."