The toss & team selection on 2nd test

[fwullah]

First of all, the decision of Sujon, Dave Whatmore and the team management to field first after winning the toss is a pretty negative one.

What is worst that the team was not selected in comparison with the field first decision in mind.

This was a negative decision to field first because -

1) It was a decision to protect the batsman from facing the England pace bowlers first up when there was some moisture in the wicket.

2) Although this is the 2nd reason that I am writing, but this is the most correct of the two. When the team had seen it raining in the previous day, it should not have made them go over-protective and decide to field first if win the toss.

They should have instead chosen to bat first again and this time, be more determined to not to lose any wicket to the rain or to the moisture of the wicket, rather than to the bowlers.

Negative decisions such as these have been one of the causes for Bangladesh to lose to Canada and Kenya in the World Cup. Don't ever forget that.

For example, it was the team management (whatever little that team management personnel were) who had decided to let Mashrafee Bin Murtoza not to play in the practice matches in Namibia and also then in the warm up matches of the World Cup.

[fwullah]

The mistake in choosing the proper eleven in comparison with the fielding first decision is that Mashrafee Bin Murtoza is certainly not "Ekai Eksho".

Mashrafee still hasn't taken a 5 wicket haul in his very short test career to be the lone specialist fast bowler in the side.

And we all know the limitations of Mushfique the seam bowler (no one can force me to call Mushfique either a pace or a fast bowler) which have been discussed in this board a lot before.

Because the Chittagong wicket was a very good one, unlike the Dhaka pitch, so we had needed another specialist pace bowler in our fina eleven, which, although I have not seen the match from the beginning to the end, but I can say so even while watching the short scorecard of the match.

A Big Proof of this is: no wicket in the first 2 hours before lunch, and no wicket in the last 2 hours of the day after lunch.

From what I have seen of the highlight of 4 English wickets that fell today on the Sports Center of ESPN India channel, Trescothick was out to Sujon to a very wide ball, Michael Vaughn was also out to a very wide ball off Mashrafee, Graham Thorpe was out to a bad shot inside edge-ing a relative standard ball to leave alone from Mashrafee and the only wicket that the bowler deserved was the wicket of Mark Butcher to Mohammad Rafique.

The other three were the mistakes made by the batsman. So if any of us have any dreams of drawing or winning this test match, we better get on with our reality thoughts and start to see yet another losing test match.

[oracle]

Mashrafe Mortaza 16.0 4 39 2
M Rahman 9.0 1 38 0
Khaled Mahmud 18.0 8 29 1 Mohammad Rafique 27.0 11 44 1
Enamul Haque jnr 14.0 0 66 0
Alok Kapali 4.0 0 12 0
Rajin Saleh 2.0 1 1 0

Also, give rafique a break. His figures are good but enamul did not get a wicket. In fact Tapash should have bowled.Aargh.

[Tehsin]

Fahmida - You don't need to take five wickets in a match to be a specialist bowler.

However, I agree with you and Orace that the team selection was not perfect. I am all for Enamul playing in a match if the wickets indicated favoring spin al around. IN this match, we needed a good back (Tapash) up for Masri, that could have made a bigger difference.

Rafique could have handled the spin with some support from Rajin and Kapali.

[rafiq]

I agree that in hindsight it is easy to second guess taking enamul instead of tapash. One wonders if there is a coherent strategy in the Bangladesh camp. I'd like to hear more about what Whatmore is saying - he seems to have gone quiet. Upon arriving in Chittagong, they (Whatmroe and Mahmud) declared that they were happy with the picth - meaning it was going to have some grass and be lively. They also saw England going in with the 4th pacer instead of batty. Why Bangladesh team selection cannot be more proactive is beyond me. They ignored the pitch and instead probably used some lame reason as " they played so well in dhaka, let's not change the team. enamul being young and all - oke drop kore or mone kono baatha dite chaina".

[Piranha]

I change my mind....Bowling first seem to be a good decision. Actaully, its the best decision considering damage control.

Ater looking at our batting today, we surely would have been less than 100 a.o. if we had batted first.