Pretty good day of test cricket for mine. hardly a spectacle, with NZ like 7th in the world and Bangladesh last, but the standard of cricket was good IMO. Only a couple of dropped catches (and they weren't from sloppy fielding, but genuinely hard chances) and 1 genuine misfield.
Bangladesh benefited from some pretty ordinary bowling early on, some of their shots were really sweetly timed and looked great. Martin managed to bowl excellent deliveries in amongst some poor ones which is why he dismissed the top four and why Mills had nothing from his first spell. O'Diren bowled 3 good deliveries and 39 incredibly poor ones. I like Bangladesh but if you can't take wickets against them, there is something seriously wrong with you. The worst part of the day was reading that mason was 12th man on the big screen and that O'Brien was playing. Especially after walking past Mason bowling in the nets before the match and he looked damn good.
Tamim Iqbal batted superbly until he got a short ball that he didn't know what to do with. Bashar was streaky, trying to hook and yet getting some sixes in there (mainly due to luck).
Shariar Nafees looked good to but then he tried to sweep Vettori and got bowled, it truly was the dumbest shot of the day.
Everyone in the crowd felt sorry for Ashraful getting a golden duck. I don't think he was expecting the ball he got. If truth be told, I think a lot of people were looking forward to watching him bat.
Mortaza was entertaining for the most part. A couple of good shots and a couple of agricultural ones.
Oram bowled as he always does - didn't look very threatening but he certainly bowled some top deliveries in there to bowl out two batsmen. Mills looked pretty good in his second spell as well.
The pitch wasn't really doing much. I couldn't see very well from where I was sitting but it didn't look like there was much movement, but there was a bit of bounce.
Ultimately, 90% of the wickets weren't bad shot selections or down to the nature of the pitch, they were really good deliveries by the bowlers.
Hossain bowled okay. The one he Fulton with was just a little faster than he expected and got him nicely. Other than that he wasn't really threatening but bowled with good pace.
I was impressed by Sajidul even though he wasn't very fast. In his first spell he kept a good line and length and was rewarded with some wickets.
Mortaza bowled pretty much the same as Hossain, while Enamul was waaaay to full most of the time.
I think Cumming was unlucky - like Fulton I don't think he was expecting it. Don't know if he'll get another chance to bat in this test but if he gets dropped I'll be pissed because he will be good for us.
Fulton, Fleming and Sinclair all looked in great touch. Some of the fours they hit were beautiful. Fulton and Fleming were out to good balls and Sinclair was a little unlucky; thought it was going down legside myself.
Matthew Bell was a real nice surprise today. He looked extremely solid at the crease, he gave no chances (though there were a couple of LBW shouts) and his footwork was good (in other words, it wasn't sluggish) and timed it well. Was a chanceless innings.
Oram batted pretty good too.
All in all, a good day. Except for a really annoying woman behind us who talked non-stop and kept name dropping like "so Harry was bowling and blah blah blah" (in reference to Chris Harris).
Jennifer tagged along and she really enjoyed the day. She really enjoyed some of the shots displayed today, and the sneaky singles.