[AsifTheManRahman]

Originally Posted by Zunaid
Did you watch day 1?

So what was the difference?

Well to quote myself from the match thread after day 1:

Hmm...almost everyone in the top and middle orders threw his wicket away yesterday. Junaid might argue that he got out to an unplayable delivery, but he was_playing_away_from his body, with the face of the bat angling towards the slips, as if to feed them. Bashar was not comfortable at all, and it was only a matter of time before he got out. Ashraful left a ball that was curving even before it pitched. Aftab looked completely out of sorts and got out trying to break the shackles and generate a big hit out of nowhere. Nafees went for a completely unnecessary sweep at a time when all he had to do was play out the overs up to lunch. Dude, you've got 5 days to improvise if someone's getting you uncomfortable. Why perform paglami at the brink of lunch?

Tamim is the only one who impressed, and I must say that he's improved his game by miles. MILES. He no longer goes fishing outside the off and looks tremendously in-form when he dispatches the bad ones. Too bad he had run out of partners - I'm sure he would have gone further with some support from the rest of the batters. He's also been awfully consistent in this series with scores of 100+, 60+, 40+ and 50+ so far.

Looks like Tamim and Ashraful are the only ones who can restore some respect in the upcoming innings. If they don't score, we don't score at all.

And to quote myself on how the openers negotiated with the Kiwis on the second day:

This was special. Truly special.

Two debutants, one of them even at the brink of getting the chop at the beginning of the tour. He starts off with a 50 in the test series to compliment his good run from day 1 of the tour. The other guy does what most Bangladeshi batsmen would do at a test match - gifts his wicket away by fishing outside the off. The team gets bundled out for 137.

And what do they do in the second inning, carrying a deficit in excess of 200 on their backs? They rotate; not the strike, but the authority. When one goes crazy, the other tones down, and that pretty much sums up this partnership so far. When one goes for the shots, the other backs him up by holding on to one end. They get behind the good ones and defend with no gap between bat and pad, keeping everything on the ground. When confronted with a bad one, they don't hesitate to dispatch it, and boy oh boy do they do it in style.

This has been a perfect test partnership. The only thing that they could have done better was to rotate the strike more often, but everything else that should be there in a test partnership was there. They attacked at the beginning at toned down when the end was near.

An 18 y/o and a 19 y/o. Hope they can score big hundreds tomorrow.

Ten grand

For Tamim, it was merely a matter of continuing the good work. He probably would have gone further in the first inning had he had some support from the others. He did get it in the form of Zunaed in the second inning, which eased the a lot of the pressure off him.

For Zunaed, the key was to be more watchful and solid in defense. To summarize, I guess you could say the difference essentially was the way he dealt with things, because had he gone out cheaply and the middle order been exposed, then only God knows how many more Harrison+poverty articles we'd have to read today.