CI article: Can Bangladesh replicate ODI success in Tests?

[MHRAM]

Since the 2015 World Cup, Bangladesh's ODI team has been on a roll. Though they lost the three-match series 2-1 to England, neither of their defeats were one-sided: they were in a position of dominance in the first game, requiring 45 from the last nine overs with six wickets in hand, and posted a challenging 277 in the third, before falling short in both matches. The defeats brought to an end Bangladesh's glorious run in bilateral ODI series at home - they won six in a row, including victories against Pakistan, India and South Africa, and in the process equalled the record for most bilateral home series wins in a row: India had six between December 2009 and November 2011.

In the last 18 months especially, Bangladesh's ODI stats have stood out because they have notched up wins against some of the top ODI teams, and have been extremely competitive even in defeat. Their overall win-loss ratio of two wins per defeat against the top nine ODI teams during this period is better than that of any other side. England and South Africa are the only other teams with ratios of more than 1.50, while the other three big Asian teams - India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - all have ratios of less than 0.6.

What has stood out for Bangladesh through this run has been their batting - they have averaged more than 39 runs per wicket and 5.72 runs per over; in the couple of years before that they averaged 29.31 runs per wicket, and 5.18 per over. With the ball, they averaged 31.52 runs per wicket at an economy rate of 5.24, which suggests the improvement in batting has been far more dramatic than the incremental improvement in bowling.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...y/1062463.html

While S Rajesh has always been behind my tail, he creates a wonderful article which higlights our massive improvement in ODIs over the years and our horror show in tests since being given our test status.

Boy, we really have flunked in the test arena. And I really don't know how we could improve significantly over time. We need improve FC structure alright, but we also need to focus on List A and T20s as well, perhaps not as much as we need to on FC.

Quite embarrasing if you ask me. In tests, our batsman don't apply themselves, as shown by Shakib today. We have the knack of picking wrong player for wrong format as we did with Sabbir, Soumya.