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Batting lets Bangladesh down

Friday, May 21 2004

In the end, West Indies won the series three matches to none against a spirited Bangladesh side. St. Vincent and to some extent Grenada, were treated kindly by the newest Test playing nation. This was the first tour for the test team as the A team had already made an impression two years ago by participating in the Busta Cup. That being said, only a few of that tour made it to this one and all the bowlers have impressed.

Le'’s take a look at Tapash Baisya. Born in Sylhet, he came out of nowhere in a depleted Bangladesh bowling line-up and from a one-change bowler has transformed himself into leading the attack. In the couple of years since his debut in Sri Lanka, Tapash has added a lot of new deliveries to his armor. He is now a dependable new ball bowler and can stand his own with the older white ball. He took the best figures by a Bangladesh bowler of four for 16 runs in the 2nd match at St. Vincent. He bowls a decent slower delivery with which he castled Sarwan.

The other performer was certainly Manjarul Islam Rana, the left-arm slow bowler. He took a three-for in the first match that Bangladesh nearly won and also contributed in the next two matches. He has a deceiving in-ducker that helped him take a wicket or two in this series. His senior left-arm spin partner Mohammad Rafique was also deadly but was surprisingly not among the wickets. Khaled Mahmud also tight and conceded a mere three runs an over in the entire series.

The whole nation was proud of these men but it was the batsmen who were a major failure. All of them were out of sorts especially the mercurial Alok Kapali. Hannan Sarkar made a solid 36 in the chase in St. Vincent but he failed to accelerate. Rajin Saleh also failed and so did Mohammad Ashraful. Captain Habibul Bashar played the worst stroke he could in the first match but redeemed himself to some degree in Grenada. His 42 was the top score by a Bangladesh batsman in the whole series. But this was a low scoring series.

The test series surely holds a lot of action but the bowlers again would have to carry the burden because now it looks almost certain that the batters will have a terrible time in the middle against the likes of Best and Edwards. The return of Jermaine Lawson could spell disaster for the Bangladeshis as it was he who destroyed them in a 4-over spell in Dhaka back in 2002.

Posted by Isam