Bangladesh coach Dav Whatmore was in jubilant mood last night after his young team overcame some early batting wobbles before coasting to a seven-wicket victory and a place in the World Cup Super Eights.

Despite the apparently straightforward nature of yesterday’s victory on paper, the burly Australian insisted at the post-match press conference that the rain-affected game had been as “difficult a match as we possibly could have had” — pointing to the difficulty of maintaining their concentration and keeping their nerve with so much at stake and on such a disjointed day.

And he hailed the win as a significant step forward for Bangladeshi cricket after a tough, defeat-strewn seven years of Test status during which many sceptical commentators have questioned whether they were out of their depth at the top level.

“I thought this game was an extremely difficult one and the boys did brilliantly to keep their focus,” he said.

“To have to wait around all day, constantly going on and off the field and then have to play a 20-over game against a team that you’re expected to beat and beat well created a huge amount of pressure. It’s the most difficult scenario I could possibly imagine.

“I know we were only chasing a small total, but the ball was doing all sorts of things out there in the first ten overs, and it took a very brave batting performance from the middle order to get us through. They’ve never really been in that situation before, with so much on the line and with so much to lose . . . so I’m enormously proud of them.

“This is very significant for us. It’s something we always believed we could do if we played to the best of our ability and had a little bit of luck.

“We were the first team to arrive in the Caribbean and had a couple of extra matches in the conditions against Canada and Bermuda. We’ve only had one training session called off because of bad weather and in general our preparation has been as thorough and as focused as it possibly could be.

“People might think we’ve caused ‘upsets’ but we knew deep down that we were capable of beating the best teams on our day.”

Given the challenges he has faced coaching such an inexperienced side since stepping down as coach of Sri Lanka (a team he led to World Cup glory in 1996), Whatmore would probably have been happy reaching the Super Eights with a team boasting an average age of 35.

But advancing past the group stages with a group of players with an average age of just 22 has given him even greater pleasure.

“It is terrific to see,” he said, smiling.

“We’ve got a couple of more experienced players, but the vast majority of them are under 25, which is absolutely perfect for an emerging team like us.

“They now have an absolutely wonderful opportunity to play against seven of the world’s best sides and they will grow enormously because of that experience.

“I understand that we are still ranked number nine in the world and have a long way to go before we are consistently challenging the big boys. But we’ve got the resources and talent to really progress and we will be going there (to the Super Eights) to really enjoy ourselves.

“And from a personal point of view it’s great to be in a position where your team is playing well and your methods are being validated.”

Meanwhile, when asked how he thought Bermuda could mirror Bangladesh’s rise from cricketing nobodies to the World Cup top eight, skipper Habibul Bashar echoed the arguments of a few others this week when he said that the quality of Bermuda’s regular opposition simply had to get better.

“You just have to play against better teams all the time,” he said.

“That’s how we have got better. For the last seven years we have been playing against the world’s top teams and it has made a big difference. Without that, you are just not going to improve as much as you want.”