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Ashraful defenceless

Bishwajit Roy
Bangladesh lost another close contest and this time against Zimbabwe when they went down in the first match of the three-match series by two wickets at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium
in Mirpuryesterday.
It was however not heartbreaking like against Sri Lanka in the tri-nation final rather it was shocking the way Mohammad Ashraful's men played the game against the bottom-side opponents Above all it was a poor and boring low-scoring game to watch.
The Tigers could win the match despite putting up a fragile total of 124 on the board after yet another imposing effort from the bowlers as Zimbabwe had to wait for the last over to see match hero Ray Price smashing two consecutive boundaries against Nazmul Hossain to confirm the 1 -0 lead in the series.
But definitely Bangladesh didn't deserve to win the match after such a poor batting show.
The rot began from the word go when Bangladesh captain Mohammad Ashraful surprised everybody by deciding to bat first He might have been brave enough to take such a decision to give the opponent medium pacers some advantage of moving the ball around but his brittle balling were nowhere to take the challenge.
It was surprising because definitely there is always help for the bowlers in the morning in foggy condition and no way can a captain dare to adventure with a batting line-up which has been struggling for long.
Was it a combined decision? The team sources however confirmed that it's Ashraful's individual decision and that there was serious dissatisfaction over his decision in the team and amongst the officials.
Ashraful had however no clear answer regarding the issue while defending himself during the post-match briefing.
"I had told the players and the coach before going out to toss that we would bat first if I call correctly. The wicket looked hard and I thought if we survive the first ten overs then we would be able to post something like 220 which can be defended on this track," he said defending his decision and reminding everyone of their failure to chase in the last match against the sameopponents.
"But we soon realized that this was probably a 160-170 pitch and we wanted to get there. Unfortunately the top-order failed again and we had die impossible task of defending 124. The pitch remained difficult longer than we had anticipated," he added.
But whatever the fact was none could accept such toothless batting if there were even some help for the seamers in the morning session. Interestingly the two openers survived the initial few overs when the ball was moving but still they were bundled out for 124 in 48.1 overs.
"We have to work hard," was the answer from Bangladesh skipper, who also showed courage coming in number three but failed to deliver, when asked why the batting continuously failed to deliver.
There were also questions raised about
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