With all due respect to the current Bangladeshi batters I just wanna mention that none of them are anywhere near Bulbul as far as temperament, class and ability is concerned. And that is where the problem is. One cannot find a single player in this team who has the ability of rotating the strike. And that is what one day cricket is all about. I honestly feel almost all the batters of this team has an attitude of blocking four balls and trying to hit a boundary of the rest two instead of trying to rotate the strike. And the result in inevitable. They create their own pressure and bring about their downfall. Players like Bulbul, Akram used to find gaps within the inner rings with utmost ease. But these current bunch just don’t know how to do it. Believe me they really don’t !!! Initially I thought they are just taking some time to settle down. But after seeing them in action for say about 35 matches I’ve started to believe that they just don’t have the ability to do that. The last generation of batters were far better. One little example should make things clear. Remember the World Cup drubbing? I still believe we were drubbed so badly by all the teams because the team we had then was an “A” team at best. And then Akram was flown in for the last match(without any sort of match practice and he wasn’t even match fit!!) because of some Injury and he made batting look ridiculously easy scoring that 40 odd against Kenya and almost won that match (He was probably the last man out and had to go for a big shot! ) No matter what ppl say I honestly believe our batting has deteriorated considerably in ODIs...We still have one decent batter from the last generation and that’s Javed Omar and one can easily see the difference between him and the other batters…Once he settles down he milks the ball with enormous ease and that is one day cricket my friend…It’s the ones and twos that can build an innings but these guys probably are not even aware of that. They reckon one day cricket is all about going hard at the ball and throwing your wicket away in the process. I’ve seen both the generation perform and trust me those batters were far better. I'm sorry to say this but this current team of ours don't even know the basics of batting in one day cricket.
[Edited on 24-7-2004 by Shehwar]
|