Performance trend - an analysis

[sam79]

The performance trend of the Bangladesh cricket team has been the subject of heated debate recently. Although the conclusion that bangladesh's poor performance has been unanimous the cause of it has come under intense scrutiny. The coach was blamed, the players, the lack of experience hence everything but the kitchen sink was analysed and criticized. There are some others factors that i would like to mention over here:

Test tours vs one-day tournaments:

The arrival of Whatmore had a major impact last year. The Bangladesh team had performed credibly in Australia and Pakistan. They performed well in the first test against england, followed by good performances in Zimbabwe and West Indies. But if the performances were seen carefully it can be concluded that our "upward trend" can only be seen in tours where we faced only one opposition. Not only that but before zimbabwe and west indies we have performed much better in tests than one-days. If you notice in the pakistan tour that we nearly won in the third test but after that we got totally bashed in the five one-dayers. With england we just played well in the first test but not in the second one and we lost heavily in the one-dayers. We got our first "real draw" in west indies. So it can be seen that our test performance always overshadowed our performance in the one-dayers. The only exceprtion was Zimbabwe where Streak was the only barrier between us and a series victory. West Indies was the only tour where we performed well in both one-days and tests. Asia Cup was the first tournament since Whamore came into power and these two one-day tournaments should not be included in the performance trend, because tests and one-day tournaments present two different ball-games for the cricket team.

Quality of the opposition:

The quality of our opposing teams after whatmore came to power should also be analyzed. The Pakistan team that we faced were fairly inexperienced and their performance was not at all impressive against other teams as well. They have only showed resurgence lately under the reign of Bob Woolmer. England was a good team and our performance was not that good with them. The next two tours involved Zimbabwe and West Indies. Even with the presence of the white players the team was relatively weak compared to the other test teams and the West Indies team was in complete disarray after England blew them away. On the other hand in the Asia Cup we faced formidable opposition in the forms of Sri Lanka, India and a resurgent Pakistan under Bob Woolmer. It can be argued that in the champions trophy we faced a south african team that was in dire straits and the same west indies team that we faced before. But it should be noted that except nafis and aftab none of the batsmen in our batting lineup had experience of the english conditions and the two teenagers who young and inexperienced to take advantage of their stay in england. It can be duly noted that most of the south african team and the west indies team had a lot of exprience with the english conditions with WI fresh from a appearance in the Natwest trophy final in england.

Adaptibility of the players:

Perhaps our biggest disadvantage is the form of our main batsman Habibul Bashar in the one-dayers. Not only that other batsmen namely Javed Omar and Rajin Saleh had performed relatively better in tests than one-dayers. That may also be another reason for our poor performance in the one-day tournaments.

[shaoun]

i think our batting is better in test cricket mainly bc of habibur bashar. he constantly performs in test which he does not in oneday. javed omar is a great test n oneday player. he shouldnt b excluded from odi team bc the way our wicket falls we need some1 who can stay in the field for a long time. he hasnt been able to do that in icc cup but he did that in asia cup n also he did it b4. he carried the bat through the innins for bd in more the one occusions. to me rajin really hasnt proved anything yet. he showed us some glimps but he has to prove himself more. md ashraful is probably the most inconsistant player in the team. i mean everytime the guy score a half century in oneday the match match he follows it by a 0 or 1 run. we need javed ashraful rajin alok nafiz to improve. we need these guys now. plus i dont think we should debut any batsman anytime soon. atleast not until the premier league finishes whenever tht is.