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Bangladesh's Tour of South Africa

More progress needed

BlSHWAJTT Roy in Johannesburg
It had been considered as the toughest task for the Tigers to play South Africa in their own conditions and nobody would disagree with this reality. Not only for the bottom-ranked Bangladesh side rather even for many other top-ranked sides it is a difficult territory to achieve something, so there had hardly been any high expectations in the Tigers' second trip to the country after a six-year gap.
But there has been nothing wrong if someone hoped that there should be an ascending trend in the performance graph of Jamie Siddons's charges. Was the trend present during the month-long trip in the country? The statistics definitely would not speak in favour of Mohammad Ashraful's men. The bowlers can raise their hands in response of this question, particularly left-arm spinner Shakib Al Hasan has every right to be thrilled, but there were hardly any scope for the batters.
In terms of result the outcome was not unexpected but the vital question is whether they were competitive enough in the series to silence the critics who always love to raise the question: "Why you people are here?"
Like Bangladesh coach and captain it is not impossible to
pick up some glimpses of individual success as Shakib showed with the leather or Mushfiqur Rahim reconfirmed that he has got the potential to become a good batsman in the longer version of the game.
But one should evaluate
the Bangladesh's performance in the series as a team.
New bowling coach Champaka Ramanayake could claim that his charges at least listened to his words by showing disciplined effort almost all through the series, particularly newcomer
Mahbubul Alam was as obedient as he could be to follow his mentor's instruction: “don't go for wicket rather concentrate to bowl on right areas”.
But it's really difficult for Siddons to find any answer for his batsmen. In this series he have had one mantra: Leave
the good deliveries and pick up the right ball to hit for survive against the fiery bowling attack led by Dale Steyn in bouncy wickets.
Unfortunately a lack of application was evident in all through the series. It was none other than captain Ashraful who was the main guilty man in this regard. One can't expect much more from a team when its captain went for hibernation only after playing one good knock.
The right-hander has been remaining consistently inconsistent as after a brilliant 73-run knock in the first one-day match at Potchefstroom, he scored five runs in the second match while the third one-dayer was abandoned due to heavy rain in East London.
Ashraful was nowhere in the Test series as he scored 1, 13,1 and 21 in his four innings of the two-match series.
Bangladesh made a bright start in the tour when they were very close to winning the tour opener Twenty20 International at the Liberty Life Wanderers Stadium but South Africa won the cur-tailed-over match by 12 runs.
There had been something to say for the team when they scored 222 runs in the first one-day match in reply to 283 and the team management was even upbeat with the fact that they could achieve two hundred runs (230) in reply to a mammoth total of 358 runs although South African skipper Graeme Smith heavily
criticised the approach of the visitors in the match.
Then it had the mission to prove their worth in the five-day game but there were no answers for the Tigers mainly because of the poor batting. In the record books they might have lost the first game on the fourth day but they actually lost both the games inside three days as rain delayed the South African win in the first Test.
The scores of 153, 159, 250 and 131 hardly reflected any team's capability in Test cricket and as a result the new look Bangladesh side
experienced the same fate their predecessors had in 2002 under the leadership of Khaled Mashud.
Despite all the gloomy features one can't fully blame this team because it's first trip for all the players and in true sense it's an inexperienced side following the exodus of the national players who joined the rebel Indian Cricket League to receive a ten-year ban.
One can understand the reality when a coach himself declared publicly that some of his players are not ready to play in this level but he is
helpless with the lack of quality players in the pipeline. And that was the reasons he is seeking two more years to get the result from his young charges.
Another thing that was mostly discussed during the series was that the facilities should be improved at home if we want to survive against this kind of quality bowling attacks in different conditions. Each and everybody in the team echoed the sentiment.
So without any doubt challenge lies both off and on the field for Bangladesh.