[Thirdman]

Sort of outdated, but on a similar line of thought from a previous post of mine...

http://www.banglacricket.com/alochon...195#post299195

Giving our fast bowlers a chance

It is true that our "typical sub-continental" conditions limit us to the extent that we cannot make fast and bouncy pitches like they have in Australia or somewhere else. Even if we could, our cricket decision makers would always make flat pitches for our home games, hoping our slow bowlers would reap the benefits, and of course, so that our batsmen can have an easier time in the middle.

But to reap the true benefits, you need to get some runs on the board. Our batsmen are unable to do that most of the times, and in reality, the visiting team reaps bigger benefits from the flat pitch, as Australia is doing right now - even their tail-ender is scoring maiden test century (okay, okay, he played well with straight bat and so on, but still he is and always will be a tail-ender). And two of our fine fast bowlers, deprived of getting any assistance from the pitch, are not quite able to do any real damage.

Now that we have a quality pace duo in the form of Mash and Shahadat (and we have more with Rasel and others), can’t we build fast-bowler friendly pitches for our home matches? I mean, how bad can it get? We scored 197 on a very very flat pitch that is considered to be a heaven for the batsmen. There are multiple examples of our low scoring in flat batting-heaven pitches before. If our batsmen cannot score runs, why deprive our capable bowlers with great consistency who can, with some assistance from the pitch, trouble even the world's leading batsmen?

Again, how worse can it get? We might score 167 instead on 197... but we may do worse than that on a flat pitch also.

And mind you, our batsmen have played the likes of McGrath and Gillespie (in his prime) *IN* Australia, and later in England - and they have played them well, in some cases. Those were not flat batting wickets either.

For our slow bowlers, I believe Rafique can trouble batsmen in any kind of pitch.

For once, we can be fair to our talented (and with better temperament, at least more than our batsmen) fast bowlers, and give them a chance to bowl on a fast-bowling pitch in home conditions, and see what they can do! We can even play 3 pacers in the team with Rafique (and may be a 5th one, why not!) taking care of the spin department.

I might be dreaming way ahead. Especially since there are no home matches in the near future.

But isn’t this worth the thought?