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Toothless Tigers

NAIMUL KARIM from Chittagong
On the face of it the Test series has belonged to Kumar Sangakkara. The left-hander followed his triple century in the first innings with 105 yesterday and became only the second player after Graham Gooch to do so. His 424 runs in the match is the third highest match total in Test cricket and the highest scored by a Sri Lankan.
Beneath these glorious landmarks though lie an unfortunate set of records that paint a rather desperate scenario for the hosts. While the batting saw improvement from the first Test, it's their bowling that has gone for a toss.
The visitors piled on a total of 892 runs in the second Test, the second highest total conceded by the hosts in Tests. The highest was against the same opponents in Galle last year, where Bangladesh gave away 905 runs.
What's perhaps most concerning is that the hosts have given away a total of 1622 runs in the two matches, which is the most that they have ever conceded. It surpassed the 1529 runs that the Lankans scored back in December 2008.
In fact statistics weren't required to substantiate Bangladesh's poor bowling performance; a mere glance would have done the job. Apart from Shakib Al Hasan, almost every other bowler bowled flat and barely threatened the opposition. Perhaps dropping Robiul Islam, who has had the best bowling average in the last one year for the hosts, was a factor.
And this is not something new. Bowling has been an arch-nemesis for Bangladesh cricket ever since the beginning. The Sri Lanka series has shown the possibility of the department taking a further step back.
A concerned coach, Shane Jurgensen identified the absence of ideal wickets in domestic cricket as the main reason behind the perennial problem.
"You need to have a surface that encourages bowlers to learn their craft. For me that's long term. For example if we play on wickets that are like the ones on the beach, that are dry and slow, after ten overs or five overs the ball is not brand new anymore and your only option is to reverse it and if that doesn't happen, which it sometimes doesn't, you are not learning," said Jurgensen.
"What the performance highlights is that there is more opportunity needed for fast bowlers. We need to quickly put together ideas and programmes to develop our fast bowlers and see how we can fast track them quickly and this starts from the grassroots all the way to domestic cricket," he added.
The more immediate process, according to the coach, was to teach the players to be patient.
"We are not patient enough. We have bowling plans and we have to make sure that we execute those plans and in this particular Test series we have not done that and it has hurt us.. .we just sort of lack that experience of what to do in that situation. We talk about it, but once you cross the line it's about doing it and we haven’t executed as much," said Jurgensen.
Like in the team, the act of failing to execute has been part and parcel of Bangladesh's domestic cricket planning, for the coach's ideas have been proposed several times in the past to no avail. One only hopes that the Sri Lanka series proves to be an eye-opener and helps towards making those crucial changes in a rather single-tracked system.