[Fazal]

Here is my Rating of BD team after 2nd Test as a fan who watched the game on internet (live video stream) after a long long time. Don’t take it seriously. This is just for fun.

Individual Rating:
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Javed: D
Positive: In 1st innings, Javed survived 78 balls and up to 26.1 overs before giving up the wicket. That helped BD to survive the early collapses and helped them to score respectable innings.
Negative: scored 16 runs in two innings, that’s not good enough even for BD team. Also he was very uncomfortable both of the innings.

Nafis: B+
Positive: Was comfortable and played very well against Indian fast bowlers. Very courageous knock from a new player is always encouraging. He will only get better. Even though Nafis was out in the first ball in the 2nd innings, it was an excellent ball by Pathan.
Negative: He was always uncomfortable against spin attack, and his batting style is a kind of suspect.


Bashar: C-
Positive: After loosing 3 wickets in 1st innings, Bashar played with positive attitude and played some very good shots and tried to neutralize the pressure.
Negative: Bashar's attaching style is too much for BD to handle. As the most accomplished batsman in BD (and as well as a captain), he needs to play it safe and minimize his repeatable mistakes, and guide the team from collapse. Again he failed to do so. As a captain, he is less than average at best.



Ashraful: A+
Positive: What can say, it was one of the best knock that I have seen live so far by any Bangladeshi batsman. It was one of the few greatest moments in BD cricket so far. That’s why you will see smiling BD fans even after another 'not so' honorable innings defeat. He was so comfortable and full of command against all of the Indian bowlers, sometimes I have to pinch my self to check whether I am dreaming or not. I haven't seen any other Bangladeshi batsman playing so good for so long. He pretty much used all the strokes in the book to score 158 N.O. in just 194 balls. He was also pretty handy with the ball also. Actually he was bowling better and getting more spin than Rana, in my opinion.
Negative: Ashraful kind of lost concentration in the 2nd innings, which is understandable. He looked too tired. The only other –ve thing I can say is the last run-out in first innings was very ill advised. I just wished he had a little bit more faith in his partner Nazmul’s batting capability. Nazmul may be #11 batsman, but he is not dummy. We just missed another opportunity to avoid the follow-on.


Aftab: B
Positive: Aftab had a very good knock of 43 in the first innings. He started well and protected the wicket. Later on he showed that he can be very attractive and capable batsman with pretty good shots especially against the fast bowlers. Considering this his 2nd test, I see bright future for BD.
Negative: Aftab was not very comfortable against spinners. He was unable to handle pressure in the 2nd innings which most likely contributed due to lack of experience in the big league.


Pilot: B+
Positive: Much better performance from Pilot in the 2nd test. We have seen very good wicket keeping from him. Very good knock in the 1st innings was cut short by bad Umpiring. At that time, Pilot was set with Arshraful. Who knows what we just missed: a double century by Ashraful?
Negative: At least I expected some good fight-back from Pilot in the 2nd innings.


Rafique: A-
Positive: When Rafique plays he plays with his heart, gives 110% effort. In the first innings, when the pitch was rarely helping the spinners, he gave trouble to Indian Batsman right from the beginning. Along with Mashrafee, Rafique was the only other bowler that put the strong Indian batsman on check all the time. With the bat, he did a very good job. Again his innings was cut short by bad umpiring. In second innings he was the 2nd highest scorer in the team.
Negative: Sometimes he bowls defensively: less flight and faster balls. He needs to realize that he is our one of the ONLY two strike bowlers.

Rana: D-
Positive: Young and a gutsy player even though he has shown nothing in this test.
Negative: His bowling is one-day material at best. I am very disappointed with his bowling. Also in two consecutive tests, his fielding was poor. He dropped critical catches that cost the team heavily. Rana scored two Gollas (ducks) in two innings in Batting. At present, Rana's inclusion in the test team can only by justified by his batting skills only; unless he suddenly enhance his bowling skills. And those two gollas are not helping his cause at-all.



Mashrafee: A-
Positive: He is one the reasons why DB fans can still dream of good things for future, and he didn't disappointed only one of them. The commentators were in full praise of Mashrafee. Whenever he bowled, he threatened the Indian batsmen constantly.
Negative: He just came from injury; therefore he was not in his full speed (even though very closes). Also, he was bowling less over with smaller spells to avoid injury which is understandable. Also he was not batting to his full capability that we have seen him before his injury.


Talha: C
Positive: Unlike other fans, I saw lots of positive and future in Talha. Besides Mashrefee, he is the only other player very well build and perfect for fast bowlers. He was not bowling to the line and length which can be fixable with experience, but he was bowling as fast as Mashrafee. You can teach a bowler how to pitch to the line and length, but you cannot teach a bowler how to bowl fast. Ok may be you can do a little bit, but not that much. Also he proved that he can be groomed as an all rounder in future with a very attacking batting of 31 in 24 balls. This was the highest individual score for BD in the 2nd innings.
Negative: He is not ready yet for the prime time. It may be better for him, if the selectors would let him play for high performance team and bring him back later in future test matches.


Nazmul: B
Positive: He is a very poised young kid, who was thrown in the Lion's den and survived handily. In the first few spells of the very first test match (2nd test of the series), obviously he was nervous and that showed in this bowling. He was not that Nazmul that we know of him from his one day games. But he recovered nicely and grabbed 2 wickets before the Indian innings was over; not bad at all. Also I suspect, he be may be better batsman than a typical #11 batsman. He could have been our hero, only if Ashrful would believe in Nazmul's batting skills. Let’s see what he does in future tests.
Negative: His speed is ordinary. I haven't seen any extra ordinary stuff in his bowling that makes fans excited. He is young and definitely will be better. With Mashrefee, Tapash, Sharif, Shahadat and even Talha, Nazmul will have hard time to be included in the test team in future.


Overall Rating:
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Batting: First Innings B, Second Innings D- overall D
Comment: Very good individual knock by Ashraful single handily moved the grade from ‘D’ to ‘B’ in the first innings. Besides that, we have seen some good batting from Aftab, Nafis, Pilot, Talha. But those are not enough to improve the batting from ‘D’ over all. May be I am too harsh, it should be C-.

Bowling: B-
Comment: Good Bowling by Mashrafee and Rafique. Ok bowling by Nazmul and Ashraful. Not so good bowling by Talha and Rana. Bangladesh missed another good Fast bowler and a spinner to help Mashrafee and Rafique. Definitely BD missed Tapash in this test.


Fielding: C
Comment: Again missed key catches but over-all much better than 1st test. Still a ‘C’.


Captaincy: D
Comment: Bashar looks like, he lacks the passion and communication skill that is required to motivate BD team. Also, his field placement and bowling change was very suspect and commentators were rightfully questioning his field placement constantly.


Coaching: C-
Comment: With a passive captain like Bashar, and authoritative coach like Dav, we expected that he would be more involved and help Bashar out in field placement and bowler rotation from outside the field through 12th man. It looks like Dav is loosing his magic power to motivate the players, as they are making mistakes again and again in batting, fielding and bowling.

Umpiring: D
Comment: In one word "BAD". We have to ask the question, where is the accountability? Why we are one that mostly get the bad calls. Why law of statistic is not working for us( i.e. we should only get 50% of bad the calls against our favor) unless the umpires are not making TRUE or INNOCENT mistakes, but they are kind of bias also consciously or unconsciously.



Overall: C-
Comment: There are lots of +ve in this game after a l-o-n-g time. But the fact is, we again lost by an innings. Therefore I cannot give any better grade than a C-.


Therefore Cheers!!! The future of Bangladesh may not be as bad as some in the media painted recently....