A Postmortem of Our Batting.

[samiur666]

The weakness of Bangladesh's batting was once again embarrasingly exposed by the Indian bowlers. On a placid pitch that offered some early assistance to the bowlers, but evened out quite nicely as the sun shone through, Irfan Pathan bowled with pace and swing to rip out Bangladesh's top order very quickly. Bashar's shot was particularly frustrating. He has shown a tendency to play some premeditated shots in the past and this was once again on display in the cross batted shot he attempted against Pathan. It seems he sets himself up for a big drive whenever the ball is pitched up or a pull whenever it is dug in short. Now if every full ball could be thumped to the cover boundary or every short ball muscled to square leg for four, there would be many batsmen in this world with more runs than they currently have. Bashar needs to realize that one has to play the ball not only on length but also on line and often defence is the best form of offence. With the ball moving around a bit as it was in the morning, it boggles the imagination why the captain of our team chose not to get his eye in before unleashing his cavalier shots. Rajin Saleh has looked out of sorts the whole tournament and the trend continued in this game as well. Following these early dismissals, came a period of play which allowed the millions of Bangladeshi fans to harbor some hopes of a creditable total. Ashraful and Kapali batted with grit, determination and patience to build a thoroughly entertaining partnership. Both batsmen refrained from any adventerous shots and instead chose to rotate the strike with some deft strokes and wonderful running between the wickets. But as is often the case for our team, this partnership was broken more through a fault on our batsmen's part than through the efforts of a bowler. One only has to look at the replay of the delivery that got Kapali out to realize just how dangerous a sudden lapse of concentration can be for an international batsmen facing an international bowler. Faisal Hussain impressed with his compact and uncomplicated batting style as well as his running between the wickets. His dismissal is one of the few in our innings for which an Indian bowler can tak credit rather than a Bangladeshi batsmen taking blame. Harbhajan bowled with wonderful line and flight and his arm ball had troubled all the batsmen who faced it. Bangladeshi batsmen do not seem to be able to read a ball from the spinners hand and rather rely on reading it off the pitch. This was apparent in Faisal's dismissal when he attempted to cut an arm ball which pitched on off and thudded straight into his pads. He had clearly been expecting another off break from Harbhajan which would have spun away after pitching. It would be wise for the Bangladesh batsmen to look at videos of some of the major spin bowlers in the world so that they are better able to read the ball out of the hand as opposed to reading it off the pitch.
Following this dismissal, the innings was effectively dead and though our ever dependent lower order chipped in with some valuable 10s and 20s, it became apparent we would never have enough runs to pose any serious threat to India. Looking at the scorecard, one can see that 5 out of our top 7 batsmen got a reasonable start, but none with the exception of Ashraful had the determination or the temperament to carry on and make a meaninful contribution. As Michael Slater pointed out in his commentary, that is something that will come with time and experience. However, no team of international standard should be giving 3 of its wickets to the likes of Sachin Tendulkar. To say he is a part time bowler would be an exaggeration. True he has the knack of picking up an odd wicket and breaking an important partnership, but it is inexcusable for our top order batsmen to have gifted him the wickets the way that we did. For Rana to be bowled behind his legs while attempting to sweep Tendulkar is not only embarassing but also worrying. It shows a fundamental lack in technique in playing the sweep. One must cover his stumps with the pad before attempting such a shot and Rana, unfortunately for him and for Bangladesh, failed to do so. The question must then be posed, if you are not comfortable playing a certain shot or lack the technique to play it, why are you attempting it in the second round of an international tournament? Once again, it is possible that with more time and experience our youngsters will be able to overcome these shortcomings but one cannot help but lose a bit of patience when our cricketers make the kind of mistakes that only club cricketers make.
Another disturbing sign was our tendency to lose wickets in pairs. We lost our first 2 wickets with the score on 10, 2 more with the score on 92 and 2 more again with the score on 117. That is certainly not the way to build a challenging total in any form of the game. Much of our problem stems from the inability of our openers to see out the new ball or post enough runs within the first 15 overs. This puts our middle and lower order under enormous pressure to not only form big partnerships but also maintain a decent scoring rate. To put things in perspective though, Pakistan managed to muster just 122 against Sri Lanka in the other game of the day so we are not the only team in the tournament who has been having problems with their batting. But while Pakistan remains a hugely talented and unpredictable team, we seem to be talented but rather predictable. We seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again. So while Pakistan goes from making a 300 plus score one day to 122 all out, we trudge the road of mediocrity and consistently post totals in the 180 range. That is not good enough. Hopefully with the return of Javed Omar in the next game and the return to form of Ashraful, we will have a more solid foundation to our innings: one which will allow the likes of Bashar and company to setle down and play out some big partnerships. One cannot help but be a little worried about Muralitharan and indeed even Chandana or Sanath Jayasuriya. With our batsmen failing to play Tendulkar's gentle toss ups with any degree of comfort, how much can we expect from them against the Srilankan spinners? That is a sobering question the team and us fans needs to think about as we look forward to the next game.

[Edited on 22-7-2004 by samiur666]

[Edited on 22-7-2004 by samiur666]

[Edited on 22-7-2004 by samiur666]

[Edited on 22-7-2004 by samiur666]

[Rubu]

some spelling mistake need to be fixed to be able to go to front page

one thing i noticed in this tournament that is different from my past experience. that is, we still have the diahorea we used to have before. but when this diahorea started, few years ago, the run rate came down to virtually zero but diahorea did not stop anyway. but here, even though they loose wicket they still try to keep the RR going. sometimes using the loose ball, sometimes taking risks. if they can only justify the risk they afford to take, this is a good sign in the rumble.

[samiur666]

Originally posted by AgentSmith
some spelling mistake need to be fixed to be able to go to front page

one thing i noticed in this tournament that is different from my past experience. that is, we still have the diahorea we used to have before. but when this diahorea started, few years ago, the run rate came down to virtually zero but diahorea did not stop anyway. but here, even though they loose wicket they still try to keep the RR going. sometimes using the loose ball, sometimes taking risks. if they can only justify the risk they afford to take, this is a good sign in the rumble.

Thanks Agent. Can you point the errors out please?

[Rubu]

clun cricketers make, club i believe. not many other though. read it u'll find, but its a good piece of work. i just wanted to say in a fancy way that it should be in front page.

[samiur666]

Originally posted by AgentSmith
clun cricketers make, club i believe. not many other though. read it u'll find, but its a good piece of work. i just wanted to say in a fancy way that it should be in front page.

Lol thanks Agent. I was too lazy to look through it.

[Navarene]

samiur, dividing the article into more paragraphs would be an ease of our eyes to read

[samiur666]

Originally posted by Navarene
samiur, dividing the article into more paragraphs would be an ease of our eyes to read

I wish I knew how! I tried hitting the space bar to indent the paragraphs and I couldnt!

[chinaman]

To make new paragraphs: Press 'Enter' . Pressing two times will make the gap more visible.

Anyway taking it for the front page. Thanks.

[BushidoTiger]

I just got done reading the article. Thank you for making it more readable w/ the added asthetic.

Despite being from a "Satanic" source, it gives a birds eye 'view' of our batsmen in action against India.

For some reason, I'm still toiling over how Mashud got Ash out.

Since you had been given the unparalleled power to go thru human veins and learn their inner most thoughts by a divine decree, I wish you had made some comment about what went thru Mashud's mind when he took off like that.

Wait a min..come to think of it, may be it was YOU, the bearer of that ever damned triple digits, whispered in his ear to go for it?! Just like how you made my granpa Adam eat that rotten fruit years back.?!!

[Edited on 7/22/2004 by BushidoTiger]

[samiur666]

Originally posted by BushidoTiger
I just got done reading the article. Thank you for making it more readable w/ the added asthetic.

Despite being from a "Satanic" source, it gives a birds eye 'view' of our batsmen in action against India.

For some reason, I'm still toiling over how Mashud got Ash out.

Since you had been given the unparalleled power to go thru human veins and learn their inner most thoughts by a divine decree, I wish you had made some comment about what went thru Mashud's mind when he took off like that.

Wait a min..come to think of it, may be it was YOU, the bearer of that ever damned triple digits, whispered in his ear to go for it?! Just like how you made my granpa Adam eat that rotten fruit years back.?!!

[Edited on 7/22/2004 by BushidoTiger]

Lol!! I have no comeback to that!

[PoorFan]

Look at the poor condition of our bats man as Samiur analyzed!
If we look thoroughly every game like Samiur did,
we will see this mess, for a long time since after PAK tour.
All of these time, we always gave them a high class valuation,
instead of looking to their "weak point" or "bad point".
All the newspaper also lead us to the wrong direction, always putting hopeful article only.
Hardly we can see some critics on them without any deep analysis.
Nice to see a brave article from Samiur, which need a curage. Hope he will continue.

It's time to discuss the "weak point" of all of our bats man, as well as bowler.
To me, I can see a lot of weakness in our bats man as a "international team"
( with my very few knowledge of cricket ).
Concentration, commitment, technique, sense, ongoing game reading ability and the opponent, consistency
and so many things. In each department there is a huge lack, in all of our players.

And the most important thing is, they don't want to realize that, so they don't even try to improve that too.
If they do, then how come Hannan get out from the first ball of the innings, 4 times? from the same bowler?
One should give his life not wicket as a player to prevent it, don't need to mention the word "International".
How come Habibul get out without score couple of runs over and over in ZIM as a captain?
How come we have to face a hattrick so often to the opponent? ( In SIL,ZIM. I don't how many out there )
There is a lot of things like these if we try to find from every one, every game.

They scores once in a ten times, and says it's because of bad form.
One good innings will bring them in form or so many thing like this.
I just don't believe it. If you fail nine times, there must be a huge problem
in every sector which makes you fail, not your form!
If I put it in other way, you do well once in ten times, because you were lucky at that time.

So all I want to say, we should discuss our "weak point" thoroughly and try to find
some solution, so that it could help the team. If we always look for some excuse
instead of analyze ourselves, we will never find the way out of current darkness.