Fighting through tough periods is a lesson Tamim learnt from Siddons © Getty

Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal thanked his batting mentor former national head coach Jamie Siddons for teaching him a lesson that helps him in trying times.

Tamim was known to be very fond of the Australian during his stint with the Bangladesh team as head coach from 2007 till the 2011 ICC World Cup and has mentioned on several occasions that Siddons had a great impact in developing his batting.

Tamim revealed that Siddons' talk came back to mind when he was battling against West Indies in their opening game of the ongoing tri-nation series in Ireland.

While Soumya Sarkar was playing an elegant innings, Tamim seemed to be struggling initially and took a long time to come out of his shell and notch up his 45th ODI fifty as well as lay the platform for the eight-wicket win with a record 144-run opening stand.

Tamim, who had crawled to 6 off 30 started to get to back to his zone after hitting successive boundaries off Kemar Roach.

"The good thing about my innings was that after struggling in such manner one can come out and play a rash shot and say probably it was not my day.

"But going through the struggle and surviving [that phase] was difficult because you might hear a few words [for struggling in such manner] but at the end you will have an impact on the outcome of the game,'' he said.

"I learnt this lesson from Jamie Siddons as he always used to say 'when you are struggling you only have two options either you can return back to the dressing room and sit with us or you can fight it out in the middle,'' he added.

Though Tamim survived and came up victorious, it did not quite turn out as he would have wanted. Tamim got out in the eighties whipping a leg-stump half-volley straight to Holder who took a great catch. It was the 14th time that he was getting out in the eighties.

"If you are out for 80 certainly you will regret. Most of the time I am to be blamed for my dismissal at that point as I tried to do something that was not necessary,'' said Tamim.

"But I was unlucky on some occasion like the last innings. I was playing according to the merit of the ball. I was unlucky that the ball went straight into the hand of the fielder and he took a good catch. In such cases you don't have much regret. I am regretting not because I could not score the century but because I failed to finish off the game,'' he said.

"Probably I will regret at the end of my career when I will look back because the amount of times I went out in the eighties if I could turn half of them into centuries it would have been nice. But past is past and no use grumbling about it. I only hope that if I get opportunities in future I just don't spill it away. If I went out for a good ball or playing a good shot it is another thing but I should not throw away my wicket,'' he added.

Tamim, who had started his career as an aggressive batsman, changed his batting to serve the purpose of the team.From the beginning of 2017 till date Tamim is the leading scorer for Bangladesh in ODIs. He started playing the sheet anchor role after the responsibility was given to him by the team management and scored 1420 runs at an average of 64.54 and strike-rate of 77.80 from the 28 innings that he played.

"Can't I play more shots, if I want? Don't I want to be adventurous too? But the thing is we play for the team. There is nothing bigger than the team,'' he said and added, "Say I played with 150 strike rate but the team lost. What's the point then? But I played with 60 strike rate but the team won, I am happy. Team wants me to play up to 30-35 or 40 overs. When the wickets fall on the other end then they want me to stay on the crease even more. I have to keep those things in mind."

"If the team wants me to play with 150 strike rate, I will definitely try to do that. If they want me to play at 50 strike rate I will do that too. If you see my records of the past few years, the way I am playing has helped the team. This is more effective. And I am trying to continue this too,'' he concluded.