Bangladesh Vs Australia ODI series - A Preview

[Miraz]

Bangladesh straightway made an impact in the recently completed test series. They lost the series 2-0 and one of the defeats was by an innings but Bangladesh succeeded to justify its test status and stopped growing concern in world media over its status.

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<FONT face=<font size=" /><st1:country-region>Bangladesh is heading into the ODI series with a record of one win in nine meetings. Bangladesh defeeated Aussies in Cardiff last year and after which the Aussies are pretty inconsistent in the ODI. Since then, they have let New Zealanad to chase 330+, lost few matches in the VB series, were stretched to 3 games in the final of that series, bowled out for 93 and obviously in the epic match let SA chase 434. Suddenly Australia ODI team has lost its prodigious image.</st1:country-region>
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<st1:country-region>On the other hand since India's tour of Bangladesh in December 2004, Bangladesh managed to win at least one ODI in every home series. Bangladesh also won the home series against Zimbabwe (3-2) and recently outplayed Kenya 4-0 to show their differences in cricketing standard. Now it's a real challenge for Bangladesh to maintain that record. They have their confidence in their mind as they have already defeated the same side less than one year ago. Aussies are definitely looking forward to thrash Bangladesh 3-0 and prove Cardiff was simply an upset although their earler attempt to do so in the test series received stiff resistance from stubborn Bangladesh side.</st1:country-region>
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<st1:country-region>Recent prolific ODI performances earned Bangladesh the final berth in the ICC Champions Trophy 2006 and before WC 2007 they will play about 15-20 ODI. Bangladesh is now considered as a better ODI outfit and a good performance in this series with at least one win will result in an all new Bangladesh who can dare to dream any achievements in ODI arena.</st1:country-region>

[exotic]

Probable teams for the first ODI, excerpt from Cricinfo.

Bangladesh (probable): 1 Javed Omar, 2 Shahriar Nafees, 3 Habibul Bashar (capt), 4 Mohammad Ashraful, 5 Rajin Saleh, 6 Aftab Ahmed, 7 Khaled Mashud (wk), 8 Mohammad Rafique, 9 Mashrafe Mortaza, 10 Syed Rasel 11, Shahadat Hossain.

Australia (probable): 1 Simon Katich, 2 Adam Gilchrist (wk), 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Clarke, 5 Michael Hussey, 6 Andrew Symonds, 7 Brad Hogg, 8 Brett Lee, 9 Nathan Bracken, 10 Dan Cullen, 11 Mitchell Johnson.

Bowling wise I don't see any real threat from aussie line up, apart from Lee and to some extent Bracken and perhaps Symonds. The key will be to see off the opening spell from Lee, and in that regard I am not too much optimistic about JO opening. It would have been much better if we go with Rajin in the opening slot. But what else we can do, its up to the team management. Best of luck to JO and I hope he proves me wrong. After seeing off the new ball, we should play sensibly when the spinners are on, taking 3/4 per over will be more than sufficient and we should go after Johnson and debutant Cullen. Keeping enough wkt for the later part of the innings will be another key. If we can go to the last ten overs with 5/6 wkts in hand its not impossible to post a score in excess of 270. But i think 250 will be a competitive total batting first and certainly we can make a match out of that.

From aussie batting point of view, they have got real depth. Sumon have to be really aggressive in his field setting at least on the earlier part of the innings of each batsmen. Key is not to allow them to settle down. We should try to get rid of Gilchrist, Ponting and Symonds as quickly as possible, these three are really dangerous, they just can tear apart any bowling line up in the world on their day. I would like to see our pacers try bowling round the wkt against Gilchrist (Freddie was highly successful against him during the ashes and world series). For Ponting, our bowlers should try to bowl on the short of length spot (i pressume it will be low bounce pitch for all the matches) and line should be off and middle and that will create a chance to get him LBW in early stage of his innings, I would also like to see a short mid wkt for ponting against our pacers. For symonds key is not to give any room to free his arm,try to cramp him bowling middle and leg line (and not too short ofcourse), bowling outside off and he will just kill our bowlers.

And lastly i am not too sure about our startegy of playing one regular spinner (among the others only rajin bowls some decent spin, i think we will miss alok in that regard) whereas aussies have opt for two regular spinners.

Best of luck Bangladesh, win atleast one of the ODIs. I am eagerly looking forward to that.

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Deleted duplicate post.

[Miraz]

Interesting to note that in previous nine occasions Australia has reached 250 mark twice (254 in both cases) and Bangladesh is also eaqual to the task (250 twice). So, the highest aussie score against BD is only 254 in ODI.

I am surprised to see in another thread that people are expecting that Aussies can even score 400+ against BD in BD soil. We should always draw a fine line between realistic and pessimistic.

[exotic]

Interesting to note that in previous nine occasions Australia has reached 250 mark twice (254 in both cases) and Bangladesh is also eaqual to the task (250 twice). So, the highest aussie score against BD is only 254 in ODI.

I am surprised to see in another thread that people are expecting that Aussies can even score 400+ against BD in BD soil. We should always draw a fine line between realistic and pessimistic.

Yeah Miraz Bhai, very much true. People are talking about 400 even 500 against Bangladesh. But I don't see aus scoring more than 300 in any of the matches, in fact there are not lot of scores in excess of 300 against bangladesh (to be precise its 15 times out of 122 outings, recently all the teams are scoring lots of 300+ against each other). Some may argue that most of the time Bangladesh batted first, so the opponents didn't get enough oppurtunity to score that much run, but out of 122 matches Bangladesh fielded 59 times in the first innings, which is little less than 50% and for a large sample we would expect that.

[sar2005]

Whatever the stat is, we have now learnt to believe that our team can pull a game, no matter if it's AUS or SRL. We are very much looking forward to experience a tough challenge by BD to AUS. Let's hope that we can prove this time that Cardiff was not a fluke and we are capable to do these now a days.