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Lessons we never learn

Shakti. Kasem
"Orey ntarish ne. inarish ne Orey rakh bowlinge," (don’t hit him, don't hit him, let him keep bowling) so yelled Jahangir Shah Badsha to yours truly many moons ago as we batted in a match against a particularly innocuous offie. The implication was clear, if we hit him for a few he would be taken off, milk him gently he would pay us in runs.
The oldest trick in the book for touring sides over the years have been to suss out potential home grown opposition in side matches so that they can be targeted as freebies in the more important matches to come. The tied one day match was probably cause for celebration for the home side, but the South Africans made sure atleast three debutants would make their way into the Bangladesh side for the first ODI, where they cpuld be dismantled at leisure. And so they did in a fairly lopsided no contest
Bangladesh went into the match with the belief that they are a better
ODI side than a Test side, they had beaten SA in the recent past, and with a few debutants fresh from scenting blood and raring to go. Ergo, a good performance was just round the corner. Sadly, it was the same old firm with the same old business acumen or lack of it The batting barring Tamim Iqbal who battled manfully and singlehandedly, never really turned up on the day. How one wished a Javed Omar and a Rajin Saleh were in the side to give the top order a sense of direction and stability while Iqbal was going for the runs. As it was, the middle order in the most crucial stage of the innings did not have the gumption to make any sense of what a defendable total was likely to be. With Aftab not in the side it was clear there would be a lack of fluidity in the scoring pattern. No one volunteered to fill in the breach.
One big problem in the batting order seems to be the fact that runs are avoiding the Bangladesh captain like the plague. Neither his batting nor his recent utterances in the press conferences seem to be making much sense these days. What is of considerable concern for the team
also is that both the captain and his deputy are not being able to pull then-weight in this series. With Mashrafe not even in the side for yesterday's match one was at a loss to understand why Bangladesh's quickest and most successful bowler Shahadat was not given the new belli. By the time Shahadat came on to bowl, Smith and Gibbs, two master craftsmen who had been there, seen all that and even bought the T-shirt by that time were ready to fleece him for 25 off his first two overs. The writing was very categorically on the wall by then. And not just for this match only.
Albeit in a non-cricketing contest, Bertrand Russell once spoke of hope springing eternal in the human breast He implied basically there were two more matches left and Bangladesh with a healthy dose of hope and dare we ask. some semblance of a spine in our batting, may script an episode of some joy for the long suffering multitudes masochistically following our cricketing fortunes. Otherwise, it appears that the familiar and meandering saga of our discontent will
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