WarWolf
June 26, 2007, 09:52 PM
Bangladesh is already 7 years old in the test arena. This is very little time be a good competitive test outfit. But yet some significant improvements should have been there for them in this time. It's a matter of great sorrow that we are still in the same place from where we started our journey. Habibul Bashar is the only productive test batsman BD ever had. If he is not in good form then the real color of the batting line up gets exposed. It is clearly evident that there are some real problems prevailing in the background that must be addressed and fixed in order to be a competitive test outfit.
A few fellow members including Ahmed bhai and Miraz bhai already had pointed some real problems that lie behind the inconsistency of Bangladesh in test cricket. Here I am adding a few more.
History of long version cricket in Bangladesh
Bangladesh came into test arena without having any longer version domestic cricketing structure and the game was mainly being played around Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Bangladesh introduced longer version of cricket into their domestic league in 1999/2000. In the first year, those games were not considered as first class ones. From 2000-2001 session, the national league games got the status of being first class ones. So our players started to play first class games and test matches at the same year. This says a lot about their failure in test cricket.
Starting from there we have already passed 7 years and by this time our cricketing structure should have been well organized. But surprisingly the main cricketing body of the country, BCB, failed to make things right. Although there are thousands of players throughout the country, none of the domestic leagues are strong enough to make players ready for the international arena.
Current conditions and statistics
Only 12 centuries have been scored in the tests in all these 7 years. Only a single batsman have batting average above 30 and another one have average above 25 (minimum of 20 test innings are taken into consideration). No player in the current test team have average above 40 in first class cricket. So far the team managed to achieve a single win which was against low ranked Zimbabwe. This shows the real poor batting capability of the team. This is really pathetic as these batsmen have a lot of talents and promises.
Bangladesh has been struggling from the very first day of their test birth and this poor form continues till today. There is no significant improvement shown over the years. Players keep on making same mistakes over and over again. In ODI cricket, we started to be a little bit competitive. But in test arena, we really have a long long way to go.
The roots of the Problem
Unorganized domestic cricket and infrastructure:
The only first class tournament in the country, National Cricket League, is still in very immature stage. BCB never took this tournament serious enough though this is the main platform to build a player. Under-prepared wickets, insufficient practice facilities, low budget for local leagues are the big obstacles. There are not enough qualified coaches for domestic teams which makes it almost impossible for young boys to adopt good techniques and temperament.
The wickets throughout the country are dead and players never have to face enough challenge in playing on these wickets. Dead wickets discourages pace bowlers too. This is one of the reasons our players fail to deliver in international arena where they have to face different conditions and wickets regularly.
Failure in finding and culturing raw talents:
While we have a good number of raw young batting talents, we failed to find enough good bowlers; both in pace and spinning departments. In these 7 years, we could only be able to find a very few pace bowlers who can stand up to international level. Enough new pacers are not coming up. Same goes for spinning department. We don't have a single leggie who can be considered as an excellent one. Same thing is true for off-spinners too. This means that we failed make enough search to find promising bowlers.
There are a lot of talented raw young batsmen along with a few good promising pacers throughout the country. But we failed to provide enough training stuffs to them for sure.
Wrong selection policy and early pushing in to the big show
History is repeating itself again and again. Whenever our players fail to deliver, we tend think that pushing new bloods into the team will solve the problem. They play a few good innings then start to collapse. Being very young, they have technical and metal weakness. Once these weaknesses are exposed to outside world those teams keep on capitalizing them. There are a lot of examples for this. Most of these players have only few first class match experiences before pushing into the big arena of test cricket. A good example of this can be our current captain Md. Ashraful. He became the youngest ever player to score a test century which one was against one of the best bowling attacks in the world consisting of Vaas and Murali. Though he was technically good, he wasn't metally tough enough to continue in the form. Once he failed to deliver consistently, he never could become mentally strong enough to recover and we still see him being inconsistent as a result of lack of confidence. The same thing goes true for a lot of other players like Shahriar Nafess, Alok Kapali, Nafees Iqbal and few others. This is the reason Australia never pushes a young player too early into the big show. And we all see the excellent result of their policy.
We need to bring mature ones into the team when we need to replace some one from the current side. Alok Kapali, Nafis Iqbal and few other players who has been dropped earlier are a bit more consistent at present. No need to push young bloods again to destroy them.
Lack of a competitive domestic cricket:
In domestic cricket, our batsmen rarely face a bowler who is really good. So it gets easy for them to score runs. But when they come to international level,they cannot cope with the quality of the bowling. Same thing is true for bowling department as well. Getting wickets in local leagues is not that tough. The real quality of the bowlers gets exposed when they face good batsmen like Jayawardene, Sachin, Dhoni etc.
In domestic cricket, you don't need to rotate strike to score runs. It's too easy there to play big shots. But international level is different. At times, scoring gets harder and to keep up the momentum you need to rotate strike.
Shot selection has the biggest problem. There is not easy way to solve this problem. Facing quality bowling regularly is the only way to overcome this problem.
One way to solve this problem is to keep the 'A' side and the academy side busy with playing similar teams from other countries. The boys need to be there for a few years before coming to top most level. This intermediate level will give them enough exposure and yet the chance to recover their technical weakness and enhance their mental strength.
A good option can be sending young talented players to play domestic leagues in other countries like Australia, England and South Africa. This will be really an invaluable exposure and experience for them.
Conclusion:
We must work with these problems before it's getting too late.There is no way to forget that we already passed long 7 years in test cricket.
A few fellow members including Ahmed bhai and Miraz bhai already had pointed some real problems that lie behind the inconsistency of Bangladesh in test cricket. Here I am adding a few more.
History of long version cricket in Bangladesh
Bangladesh came into test arena without having any longer version domestic cricketing structure and the game was mainly being played around Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Bangladesh introduced longer version of cricket into their domestic league in 1999/2000. In the first year, those games were not considered as first class ones. From 2000-2001 session, the national league games got the status of being first class ones. So our players started to play first class games and test matches at the same year. This says a lot about their failure in test cricket.
Starting from there we have already passed 7 years and by this time our cricketing structure should have been well organized. But surprisingly the main cricketing body of the country, BCB, failed to make things right. Although there are thousands of players throughout the country, none of the domestic leagues are strong enough to make players ready for the international arena.
Current conditions and statistics
Only 12 centuries have been scored in the tests in all these 7 years. Only a single batsman have batting average above 30 and another one have average above 25 (minimum of 20 test innings are taken into consideration). No player in the current test team have average above 40 in first class cricket. So far the team managed to achieve a single win which was against low ranked Zimbabwe. This shows the real poor batting capability of the team. This is really pathetic as these batsmen have a lot of talents and promises.
Bangladesh has been struggling from the very first day of their test birth and this poor form continues till today. There is no significant improvement shown over the years. Players keep on making same mistakes over and over again. In ODI cricket, we started to be a little bit competitive. But in test arena, we really have a long long way to go.
The roots of the Problem
Unorganized domestic cricket and infrastructure:
The only first class tournament in the country, National Cricket League, is still in very immature stage. BCB never took this tournament serious enough though this is the main platform to build a player. Under-prepared wickets, insufficient practice facilities, low budget for local leagues are the big obstacles. There are not enough qualified coaches for domestic teams which makes it almost impossible for young boys to adopt good techniques and temperament.
The wickets throughout the country are dead and players never have to face enough challenge in playing on these wickets. Dead wickets discourages pace bowlers too. This is one of the reasons our players fail to deliver in international arena where they have to face different conditions and wickets regularly.
Failure in finding and culturing raw talents:
While we have a good number of raw young batting talents, we failed to find enough good bowlers; both in pace and spinning departments. In these 7 years, we could only be able to find a very few pace bowlers who can stand up to international level. Enough new pacers are not coming up. Same goes for spinning department. We don't have a single leggie who can be considered as an excellent one. Same thing is true for off-spinners too. This means that we failed make enough search to find promising bowlers.
There are a lot of talented raw young batsmen along with a few good promising pacers throughout the country. But we failed to provide enough training stuffs to them for sure.
Wrong selection policy and early pushing in to the big show
History is repeating itself again and again. Whenever our players fail to deliver, we tend think that pushing new bloods into the team will solve the problem. They play a few good innings then start to collapse. Being very young, they have technical and metal weakness. Once these weaknesses are exposed to outside world those teams keep on capitalizing them. There are a lot of examples for this. Most of these players have only few first class match experiences before pushing into the big arena of test cricket. A good example of this can be our current captain Md. Ashraful. He became the youngest ever player to score a test century which one was against one of the best bowling attacks in the world consisting of Vaas and Murali. Though he was technically good, he wasn't metally tough enough to continue in the form. Once he failed to deliver consistently, he never could become mentally strong enough to recover and we still see him being inconsistent as a result of lack of confidence. The same thing goes true for a lot of other players like Shahriar Nafess, Alok Kapali, Nafees Iqbal and few others. This is the reason Australia never pushes a young player too early into the big show. And we all see the excellent result of their policy.
We need to bring mature ones into the team when we need to replace some one from the current side. Alok Kapali, Nafis Iqbal and few other players who has been dropped earlier are a bit more consistent at present. No need to push young bloods again to destroy them.
Lack of a competitive domestic cricket:
In domestic cricket, our batsmen rarely face a bowler who is really good. So it gets easy for them to score runs. But when they come to international level,they cannot cope with the quality of the bowling. Same thing is true for bowling department as well. Getting wickets in local leagues is not that tough. The real quality of the bowlers gets exposed when they face good batsmen like Jayawardene, Sachin, Dhoni etc.
In domestic cricket, you don't need to rotate strike to score runs. It's too easy there to play big shots. But international level is different. At times, scoring gets harder and to keep up the momentum you need to rotate strike.
Shot selection has the biggest problem. There is not easy way to solve this problem. Facing quality bowling regularly is the only way to overcome this problem.
One way to solve this problem is to keep the 'A' side and the academy side busy with playing similar teams from other countries. The boys need to be there for a few years before coming to top most level. This intermediate level will give them enough exposure and yet the chance to recover their technical weakness and enhance their mental strength.
A good option can be sending young talented players to play domestic leagues in other countries like Australia, England and South Africa. This will be really an invaluable exposure and experience for them.
Conclusion:
We must work with these problems before it's getting too late.There is no way to forget that we already passed long 7 years in test cricket.