i'm very very disapponted and heart broken, but i still believe bangladesh will be a much better team in a few years. ashraful, aftab, nafees duo, mashrafee, shahadat, enamul, rasel are all young. how many other countries would you see giving test caps to players this young except for pakistan?most of these players came out of HP and under-19 squad and went straight to the test team. whereas their opponents played a lot of domestic cricket and first class matches against quality opposition before playing for their nation's test side. almost all the players in the sri lankan side are much older, experienced than bangladeshis. some of them have played for more than a decade. they've played against the likes of border, gooch, botham, imran, kapil, waugh...... it is very very hard for players like ashraful, aftab, iqbal, shahriar to compete against their experience. all of them have just thrown their wickets away. not because they don't know how to play fernando, malinga, vaas or murali, but becasue they don't have any role models in the team to show them, here, this is how you play. their role models are javed and bashar. but unfortunately both javed and bashar played very irresponsibly. it was hard to tell whether they were playing 20-20 or test cricket. these same players play ODIs with much slower strike rate. so, when natural stroke players like ashraful and aftab see their captain and senior opener playing shots, how can they resist themselves? they see their captain getting out playing a silly shot and going back to pavilion in humiliation. so, when they go out there to play they probably think, i'll play shots. if i score some runs good, if not i'll get out like my captain. no one can blame me as no one is taking responsibility. Ashraul, aftab and shahriar nafees have shown in 2nd innings that they can play responsibly. they couldn't stay in the middle simply because of lack of experience. i believe in a few years time they will turn out to be more responsible players and match winners for bangladesh.
Edited on, September 22, 2005, 6:57 AM GMT, by howzatt!.
|