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Even trusty Mirpur presents no takeaway
PHOTO: FIROZ AHMED
Sports Reporter
Despite the two close-margin defeats, Bangladesh team management is bound to find very little room to extract any positives from the T20I series against Pakistan as the Tigers managed to expand their horizon of concerning areas rather than finding answers to the problems that already existed.
Pakistan won the three-match series comprehensively and handed the Tigers a whitewash with a five-wicket victory in the finale, which saw a last-ball finish, at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Mirpur yesterday.
Prior to the series, solving Bangladesh’s batting crisis was the biggest priority following a disastrous World Cup campaign and thus, this series was always going to set the tone in how Bangladesh recover from the slump as well as establish their vision for the future in the shortest format in order to fare better in the coming T20 World Cup in Australia next year.
The alarming question is whether the think-tank’s blueprint for evolution, which they laid out this time prior to the series, is practically in tune with reality or whether the general planning and the backing philosophy need re-evaluation for its apparent lack of clarity in approach, if not in execution.
Team director Khaled Mahmud has earlier emphasised on ‘giving exposure to new players’ who would be able to ‘express themselves freely’ in this series. He even considered it as an ‘investment series’ against the semifinalists of the recently concluded T20 World Cup.
Despite all the talks, the players were exposed, and definitely not in a good way. Bangladesh made as many as six changes for this series, handed debut to a new opener, tried out two new opening combinations, shuffled the batting order, among many other things but eventually the side have only generated sorry figures one after another.
The fact that the paltry score of 127 for seven by the Tigers in the first game remained their top score of the series goes a long way to show that the problems in the batting department are far from being solved. Scores of 47, 23 and 35 in the final five overs in the three games only prove the lack of firepower in the batting order. And that none of the batters were able to score even a fifty in the entire series played on home soil would only add salt to the Tigers’ wound.
Now, can someone like the tried-and-failed opener Saif Hassan, deemed as a Test specialist, be able to recover from the given nature of exposure, and can the batters undo the fracture in confidence that may induce from a home series whitewash? Can ‘the process’ be trusted when the evidences continue to speak otherwise?
On the face value, Bangladesh team management always seem to have answers to most bad patches they encounter. However, this time it looks like the nature of question has morphed by the time they began answering as the Tigers find themselves at a worse state from where they had started to regroove.
SCORES IN BRIEF
“The way everyone has put in the efforts, credit goes to the players. You can always improve. Like our fielding has improved, our middle order has won games for us. Whatever mistakes we made; we want to make sure we don’t repeat them in the upcoming games. We want to carry this momentum into the Test matches. I want to thank the fans here.”
Babar Azam, Pakistan captain
Bangladesh
124 for 7 in 20 overs (Naim 47, Shamim 22,
Afif 20; Wasim 2-15, Qadir 2-13)
Pakistan
127 for 5 in 20 overs (Rizwan 40, Haider 45; Mahmudullah 3-10, Shohidul 1-33, Aminul 1-26)
Result: Pakistan won by 5 wickets.
Player-of-the-match: Haider Ali.
Player-of-the-series: Mohammad Rizwan.