[al Furqaan]

I'm not going to write Naeem off...I think he top scored twice (at least amongst the top order batters in the side). Its true that on seaming, swinging conditions he'll likely get exposed, but how often will we be playing there? And we'd be expected to lose anyways. At least we can compete at home if we had 4 Naeem's in the side.

I also disagree that young pacers get injured because they are young. Cummins has an extremely taxing action, one that I'm surprised hasn't snapped his lumbo-sacral column in half. Rubel's injury came from a bekaida dive while fielding in that Pakistan Test + re-injury in the BPL. Mashrafee was made of glass like Bond, Cummins, Malinga, and a few others. Injuries happen due to the amount of cricket being played and the travel associated with modern day cricket. Tests and ODIs here, then BBL, then IPL, then CLT, then ICC World T20...this is what is killing the fitness of fast bowlers. Our pacers barely play int'l cricket and none will be in any of the T20 leagues, so I see no reason to use that to keep Taskin out if he really is the next best pacer we have. He shouldn't play ODIs or T20s because I don't think he's a limited overs player anyways and we also have a settled LOI pace attack.

Agreed about pacers getting wickets on flat tracks. Look at Best, he's built like an NFL running back. He could probably bench press the entire Bangladesh team...he hardly swung the ball and aside from a few balls didn't cut it either. He got wickets on a dead pitch but just bowling full and straight for middle stump. He must have been bowling around 90 mph. In the absence of brute pace, you won't get wickets. In contrast, Edwards and Sammy both got their wickets due to unforced batting errors...Best earned every single wicket with unplayable (at least for us) deliveries.

Spinners on the other hand can bowl a marathon spell of 20 overs for 3 hours without change and take a couple wickets on a dead track. Pacers cannot. In that light Rubel who bowled crap in the first Test, bowled as well as you can expect a Bangladeshi pacer to bowl in the 2nd...ie he bowled very very well.