Bangladesh and India

[Tehsin]

Sadly, India has decided to closely follow their neighbors. It was one of the worst batting displays by India and one would be forgiven to think that they were watching Bangladesh (except for Tendulkar) at play. Is there something wrong in our waters ?

The biggest difference offcourse was that BD would have been lost by 10 wickets within 15 overs.

NOw, India ought to play better and win a few matches (Namibia for one, England and Zimbabwe should be easier too - Pakistan will be interesting) - Since they came down to our level, shouldn't we (BD) follow them for the rest of the cup ?

As I write this, Kenya is looking great at 99 for 1 off only 22 balls and almost ALL of SHAH's shot landed on the grounds and stayed there. Didn't have to play expensive shots to get there.

[samia]

india's performance is no better than BD's and india scored almost as much as BD did against a strong team (australia and sri lanka) and india is supposed to have some of the 'best' players in the world...so BD isn't that bad afterall.

[Sham]

In our match against Australia in the ICC Trophy, we scored 133. India scored 125 yesterday. Doesn't say much for us though, it just proves how pathetic Indian batting is overseas. Also, we won that game by nine wickets after Rafique got Gilchrist(I think) out. So not much difference there. Also, Canada scored 197 against Kenya, a bit more than what they scored against us.

I think Bangladesh has a stronger bowling attack than Kenya, and I am not just inferring that from this one game against Canada. Our bowling in recent years in ODIs has not been that bad. We did well against SL in SL in the ODIs, we kept NZ to 244 in the ICC Trophy, we didnt do too badly in South Africa or against the West Indies either. Test teams have scored 270-280 against us consistently but they usually do that against the other Test sides too. We haven't really been plonked around for 315 too often in recent times. I think that is a positive. Monju and Rafique in particular have held our bowling together and kept the runs down, even if they haven't run through sides.

The problem is, if we bat first, we don't give the bowlers a chance to make a difference. In the couple of games that BD has batted first and managed a score of over 200, such as the first ODI against SL when we scored 220 odd, the bowlers have done pretty well. In that particular match, SL won in something like the 47 overs and by 4 or 5 wickets. Thats not bad at all, making SL bat for 47 overs to score about 220. However, usually the bowlers are defending something around 120, so they don't have a chance. And when we bowl first and keep other sides to 244, we get bowled out for 77! The batting has to click, otherwise we will face humiliation over and over again.

[Pundit]

Thanks Sham ! Yes, we really cannot expect anything from our bowlers when they are defending totals around 125 or so.

I hope MASRI shrugs of the rust, and his bones grow stronger. We need that extra burst from him. Looking at Ntini firing at 85 mph doesn't make me want to say much - but it seems too many folks are discontent with his 83-87 mph. I haven't seen him bowl yet..so no qualitative inference here.

[Tehsin]

Masri has bowled fast enough but he loked liked he has been holding back and considering the fact that he has not played for a whole year and only got back into the side recently. That's why he did not look like the MASRI we have all been expecting. His only fault is our higher expectations, no what he is really doing out there.

ON the the hand, Tapash has no idea why he is in playing - he probably thought, hey, Talha bowls better then me and I still get in the team, wow, maybe I just need to keep on sucking like HANNAN. :)

[shahid]

i think BD and India are of nearly same level. Are India missing VVS Laxman so dearly ?

[rafiq]

again, fooling ourselves into thinking india's problems somehow absolve us of our own sins is a waste of time. india suck right now, maybe we can be competitive with them if we played them tomorrow. but so what, how do we become a better team? as for
being sick of wisden writers" those guys are giving the indian team what it deserves and have been since last year.

instead of feeling good by comparing ourselves to the bottom of the pile, should we instead try to emulate the attitude and committment of the teams at the top?

[Arnab]

well said.

[Tehsin]

If we can't even beat Canada and can't even OPENLY expect a win against Kenya, what's the point ? Also, if we can't even win one out of 10/15 games against another test sides - what's the of us wasting our time on these bunch of idiots ?

[Tehsin]

One of India's leading daily's wrote after the loss to Australia : It won't be too long until the fans get to ONLY enjoy a match between Bangladesh and India. :)

They are exaggerating ofcourse, we will still manage to lose to a mentally weak Indian side quite easily but my hope is - it won't be too long when we get to enjoy a Bangladesh vs Australia match.

[Shubho]

let's just hope that incompetent coach Mohsin Kamal can give our incompetent players some useful advice for a change ahead of the Windies match. let's also hope that our incompetent cricket board (BCB) has learnt its lesson, and will do something about the cricketing infrastructure back home.

apropos india, i think it's laughable that we're comparing our team to the indians. yes, they're down in the doldrums, but they have years of success to compensate for it (plus a world cup title). as rafique bhai pointed out, it's time we aspire to the top of the crop. there's no point being proud to be just as bad as the next weakest test-playing nation.

[deshitrader]

rafiq,

i agree with you. using poor performances by india to help us feel better is not going to get us anywhere. of course, we poor bangladesh fans need to find some way to help us cope with the pain...and an embarassing performance by india to follow each of our matches sure does help. however, what i fear is that our players may be thinking along the same lines...the india embarassments may nudge them toward feeling that their performances in the last two matches were not fundamentally horrendous.