2 spinner strategy

[rafiq]

I am sure the match thread has had many comments on the absence of Shahadat in this first match, but those are hard to find. What is going on with Dav Whatmore's new 2-spinner-or-die strategy? This seems to have started with the Africa tour, and they will field 2 spinners at the cost of a third pacer no matter the field conditios.

Mohali is a perfect wicket for Shahadat, yet they picked the 2nd spinner again, and top of that picked Rassel on account of his wickets in the practise match. Then the horrible blunder by Bashar to bowl first - did you hear the reason he gave, which sounded like the evening dew would be bad for spinners so they bowled first. That is Bashar at his most negative! Why drop the third pacer in the first place, and then bowl first to compensate for having too many spinners on a track where teams batting first have won 66% of previous matches!

So the saga of poor decisions continue for Whatmore, Bashar and Bangladesh. The 2 spinner strategy cannot work on every wicket, but it seems we are stuck with it unless playing on a true greentop (as if Mohali isn't?).

[Flip Master Mick]

you raise a good point bro... i think rafiq is an automatic choice in our ODI team and razzak has been bowling well lately... someone has to take a stand and have the guts to drop rafique every now and then to make way for a third pacer on pitches like mohali...

[thebest]

ultimately pacers cost us. Mash+Rasel+ Farhad cost us more than 180 in 28 overs. so 2 spinners strategy did not cost us. Cost us our so called best pacer who does not know how to ball at death?

[Duck]

Ironically, the 2-spinner strategy worked fine in every sense.

[Tokyobreeze]

Yeah..the two spinner strategy is working okay.And, also taking batting into account (u gotta consider that our top order is always a flop order and middle-lower order does most of the works), Razzaque is doing pretty good these days.He helped winning the 2nd game against Kenya and also today he played a good knock.And, we all know that Rafiq is a great striker of ball.So, taking all these into account playing Razzaque is not a bad decision, I think.

[Ehsan]

Playing 3 pacer and 1 spinner would have backfired as there is really nothing for pacers in these Indian pitches. I would suggest replacing Russel with Shahadat for the next game.

[Pundit]

The spinners did pretty well, don't you all think so? Rafique is like vintage wine.

[Tokyobreeze]

Originally Posted by Pundit
Rafique is like vintage wine.

And, Razzaque is going there..Now looks like good grape to be converted into wine as the time progress:p

[Sam]

I agree with most of you.
The 2-spinner theory worked perfectly well. Mohammad Rafiq and Abdur Razzaq bowled with the best ERs, with 3.7 and 4.9 having 3 wickets conceding 86 runs. Whereas, the 3 pacers got 3 wickets conceding 188 runs having ERs 7.9, 6.5 and 6.0.

[Fazal]

Razzak's stat is kind of skewed becuase he was the only spinner who bowled 2 overs in power play (1st 20 overs) and 4 overs in last 10 overs. One Commentator was raising the issue why not using our best bowler, Rafiiq during the later part of the power play. Rafiq also didn't bowled any over in the last 10 overs. I was surprised by Bashar's bowling changes.

[sar2005]

Spinner did much more better than pacers. I would recommand to use 4SLAs against WI. All Rafiq, Razzak, Sakim, Mehrab should be included against WI and Mashrafi with Forhad should open the bowling attack. I don't know why BD don't use Aftab occassionally.