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Old August 26, 2014, 03:38 AM
jeesh jeesh is offline
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Join Date: January 4, 2005
Location: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Posts: 4,093

Bangladesh does not possess high strike rate bowlers, and is far away from producing ones.

Best bet thus would be to improve fielding significantly, and have more discipline in bowling. Dont ball wides or no balls. Always bowl in the corridor, make it difficult for batsmen to rotate the strike. Place fielders to prevent easy singles (Not Mushfiq likes to spread the field allowing batsmen to nudge and run). Considering we have many spinners, overs will also keep ticking by, run rate will dip. Eventually batsman will take chances and throw away wicket. This is exactly the approach that was used by Rafique, Razzak and Shakib. It was very effective! Sri Lanka also utilized this in the late 90's. They used to target overs 15-40. Those 25 overs they would do their best to suffocate the opposition with accurate spin bowling by Jayasuriya, Muralitharan, Chandana etc.

While this all sounds nice in theory, how easy is it to implement? For Bangladesh very. Mushfiq first all doesnt think like this, at least his field placements, choice of bowlers doesnt reflect. Then you have guys like Razzak who will bowl 3 good deliveries and then a wide one or down the leg side which will be hit for 4. The boundary eases the pressure and the dots from previous deliveries count for nothing! Likewise Rubel or Shafiul or even Al Amin will come and give a 15 run over spoiling the entire tempo.

Bangladesh sadly is still far away from having bowlers who can pick wickets with genuine skill and put the opposition on the backfoot. Likes of Al Amin and Taskin have shown glimpse, but how often they can repeat is the real test. Best bet would be learn from the Sri Lanka of the late 90's. Whether this idea will work in the T20 era is another question. But not that we have much choice.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing, which is enough to save itself from its predators. Maybe time for us to realize we are a hedgehog and start acting like one!
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