Perfect Article

[fwullah]

I would call it a perfect article, wouldn't you?



Six Bangladesh batsmen went past 20 in the second innings; none had the temperament or maturity to consolidate on their start and play a long innings.




But with habitual carelessness, Bangladesh undid the good work.




Spurts of strokeplay enlivened the evening session but defied logic. Surviving the day increased the possibility of rain rescuing Bangladesh. But the urge to entertain took precedence over basic common sense.


Wisden - Cricinfo (http://www-usa.cricket.org/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2003/MAY/176767_CI_03MAY2003.html)

[Sham]

The first innings was absolutely pathetic, but I don't see what we did so wrong in the second innings. Firstly out of the five batsmen who did get out after getting past 20 (Selim is still there), atleast three of them got out to very good balls! Javed and Ashraful got balls that pitched on line and turned and both had to play and edged to first slip. You sort of expect that to happen with a left-arm spinner dont you? And Akram got a snorter from Ntini. Even Bashar's out was a bit unlucky because the ball jumped up from a length. As for Kapali, I didn't see his dismissal so I wont comment!

Guys, I know we played badly and we are all upset. But I think we are getting to a point where we always blame our batsmen when they get out and don't realize that the SA bowlers are pretty darned good and they are gonna bowl good wicket taking balls as well. Losing 8 wickets is disappointing but I don't think we could have done much about most of them. They were simple good balls that most batsmen would get out to. The dismissal that pissed the hell out of me was Opee's run out!!

The first innings though was absolutely pathetic. What the hell were we doing? It was like the Canada match. We had a target to reach (131) and every batsmen tried to get there by hitting as many fours as possible. It was crazy but every batsmen's went out to the middle, hit a couple of 4s, and got out! Have to say though, Sumon got a bad decision!

[Tehsin]

So, no excuse for not being able to make South Africa bat again. Specially when we did go past 200 against the same team on the same day on a pitch that was supposed to get worse as the day progressed..... We had the best opportunity to make SA bat and maybe lose by less then couple hundred runs .... *sigh*


Promising second innings though. Showed courage to come back and all the top order played quite a few overs - unlike just one or two players playing about 90 balls and the rest playing 10-30 balls. I see that as a progress. Not much .. but given the pressure, our recent performance and the pitch condition ... Folks, we scored past 200 again and this time in a supposedly TOUGH wicket against the number two team in the world. UNfortunately, for our next match, we play Australia and Not Zimbabwe or an unpredictable Pakistan. So, hopefully the players won't take the bashing too harshly. They should take this opportunity to play out as many overs as possible and strengthen their technique against the best attack in the world. It's the bowling I am worried about. The Aussies will be much more methodic then SA and we could have two days without a single wicket before they declare. :)

[samircreep]

Nope, I don't agree with Sham.If you look at the dismissals, most of our batsmen got out by playing horizontal shots off slower bowlers.This was a slow, turning track and if you look at the SA innings, most runs were scored by batsmen who were adept at playing drives off the front foot.Against slow bowlers, drives off the back foot were the order of the day, since one could adjust for the lack of bounce by playing late.In fact, most of the SA batsmen perished while trying to cut Rafique.

If we look back, I think only Golla got out to a good ball.Akram, well, this guy is inept at playing the short ball.But his inclusion in the team is a differnet matter altogether.

So the bottom line is the same old story:our batsmen lack proper shot selection.Not to take anything away from the SA bowlers, but aside from Pollock and Ntini, they are very average esp. their slow bowlers.But we've been harping on this for the longets time.

[rafiq]

too bad it was another innings defeat, should have been a little better.

so samir, without trying to over-analyze what you are saying (don't have the energy to do that), I think you are saying that our batsman will get out to any bowler, fast or slow, on any wicket. that about sums it up.

[fwullah]

The wicket had some moisture in it in early morning for the South African pace bowlers to do something due to the rain and the covering of the pitch for the rain.

But since we are not capable of handling this type of moisture-pitch (also a dead grass pitch) then we SHOULD lose to Canada. All the Canadians had to do was to bowl a littl accurately, and voila!

In case of the follow-on score of 131, I don't think the players even knew of this margin of 131 follow on score. Forget the players - I don't think the team management also never bothered to know about the follow-on score. - Why, I didn't bother to calculate or to find out the follow on score - then why should a Bangladeshi coach and a Bangladeshi captain and a Bangladeshi manager - who is also not a cricket manager in any sense?

[samircreep]

No, that's not what i said at all.But on this type of wicket, you shouldn't be playing the type of shots that Selim played in the first inning.Sorry for using another cliche, but can we start making the oppostion EARN our wickets for a change?As i said before, apart from pollock and Ntini to some degree, no SA bowler bowled very many wicket taking delivery.

[Sham]

The players obviously knew about the follow on score. When a team bats second in a Test Match, the first thing they do is subtract 200 from the opposition's first innings total to figure out how much they have to score to avoid the follow-on. You may have missed it out but the team didn't, I can assure you of that. The problem is, because the follow on score was pretty low, our players thought they could blast their way to it. We always make a major hash of chasing low totals. When we need to score 120, we always score 77, and when we need to score 290, we score 225. Thats just how our boys play.

Samir, you are right, the players play too many horizontal shots. I mentioned this a long time ago, but when our batsmen drive, they even do that with a partially horizontal bat. Rokon is one guy who actually drives like one should. Anyway, my point was, some of the dismissals that I saw were pretty legitimate (second innings). Having said that, I watched the game on a little screen on realplayer, and the picture quality wasn't that great.

[shahid]

against canada, our players thought that they could score 181 runs quickly enough and win the match, but that match showed us where we stood in cricket. we did score 185 against kenya when we needed to score 218. we always fall some runs short, no matter we need 150 or 250.