Looking back at our Natwest Series Performance

[wasim_admirer]

Bangladesh team having had a very long tiresome tour can really build on the positives they have achieved in this tour and looking back at their performance against Australia and England in this Natwest series, i think we as fans will view Bangladesh team differently every team they play an ODI.

One thing that impressed me as a fan as how inexperienced the players were compared to other teams and despite all that we did so well.

Given the fact that the ball moves around a lot in England, the pitches we played in were by no means flat batting pitches and we have scored 250 once and chased 250 in 49.1 overs and it shows that our team has come of age.

Ashraful was the best player in the team. He was trying to be defensive in Test cricket as the game requires a team to last longer and as we saw in the ODIs offense can be his best defense.

If he keeps playing with the attacking flair he really times the ball well and he can still score very fast without taking unnecessary risks like the 52nd ball against England.

We could have easily made 100 and if he stayed till the last few overs our team would have scored 275 easily but it wasn;t to be.

Tusahr Imran is a very good player but numbers will never reveal the true story.

You can't blame him and Ashraful because Brett Lee was chucking the ball at a good pace and there wasn;t any plan to see him off the attack after the magnificent 6 Ashraful hit.

If Ashraful got to face Watson and Gillespie then we would have easily scored 275+.

In Australian team, most of the batsmen just know how not to throw their wicket away when run scoring becomes a not so easy affair. That's the area we can improve on by maturing.

Bashar played some genuine cricket shots and for his height those shots were classic. They may not look as glorious as Kallis but to me, he is as good as anyone facing the fast bowlers and just need to be aware of the rising ball as he was really unlucky yesterday.

I still think Tushar can be our Symonds as he can hit the ball long way and he should not be exposed to Lee's pace so early. Against other teams he will do well.

Tushar Imran is not like Javed Omar because if someone wants to maintain high strike rate 80 - 100 and then it's lot more difficult then trying to stay at the wicket and maintaining a strike rate of 50.

Javed Omar will do well against less pacy bowlers but the problem is he never shows the intention of improving the team's run rate even if he plays 50 balls and when the medium pacers are on after opening burst from the quick bowlers.

Javed Omar is not the ideal player for ODI because this Bangladesh team is capable of scoring 250 - 300 every time they bat and having a player like Javed Omar doesn't help.

He is like India's Akash Chopra. Javed Omar is our ideal test opener.

I think Nafis Iqbal and Shahriar Nafees Ahmed will make a very good opening pair. Because if they see of the threat of the new white ball in any given day they will play theit shots unlike Javed not even trying to rotate the strike.

We have some exciting young fast medium bowlers coming through the ranks and soon they will make their presence felt in the international arena.

Bangladeshlive.net's efforts weren't valiant as bangladesh team rose above the occasion and showed to us all that they can consistently play well even against the very best.

[IanW]

The longer the series went, the better they got.

And with the number of stroke-players in the side, you need JO there to hold one end up and make sure a collapse doesnt happen.

But fundamentally, the batting's OK. A second good quick, and a good slow bowler who isnt SLA is the next step.

[wasim_admirer]

I still think we need to use bowlers like Shahadat, Shafaq Al Jabir, Rasel and give them more international exposure.

I wish BTV World would broadcast the A team match highlights. A team tour is something we all should look forward to.

I thought Aftab didn't get enough opportunities to carry on from where he left off against England with his classy 82 not out from 82 balls.

However having said that though he batted at no. 6. he wasn't making the full use of the number of overs he had left.

While he is not as dashing as Tushar Imran he is more suited to the new ball attack with more pace offered to him rather than the slow bowlers. Tushar looks superb against the slow bowlers.

I would sincerely hope that they will not punish any of the existing ODI batsman who played in the final XI for the last few games.

If a team can consistently score 250 against Australia in English pitches it underpins the team's batting depth.

There is no denying the fact that when opposition batsmen are in the back foot not trying to blast taposh, taposh has better figures. But when english batsmen tried to blast him, he was afraid and his length got disturbed and he got thrashed. Before last game his econ. rate was 9.18. He is still a better bowler than Khaled Mahmood Sujon.

So i thought we needed to have played a genuine pacer instead of Khaled Mahmud.

Nazmul has been given enough opportunities but in the last game we could have played Munir or Shahadat.

I am looking forward to having tall fast medium / medium fast bowlers extracting lot of bounce from the pitch and making the opposition batsmen struggle in the middle.

Young tall bowlers tend to be good fielders as well as Mashrafe demostrated but Javed Omar missed a catch and failed to stop the ball when Gilly skied one.

Anyway very pleasing tour and let's forget the ODI ranking. In any given day, we can beat the other teams that didn't participate in this series.