<i>Tigers fail again</i>
Photo: AFP
As usual the Tigers went down meekly in the Test series. Once again our batsmen showed how untrained they are to play in the longer version of the game. Almost all of them chased the balls outside the off stump; they stood still on the crease and regularly fished at the wide balls. There was absolutely no footwork, I think they need to improve a lot with their footwork. Shot selection was also very poor. It seems they can't score runs in singles and couples which is inarguably the most vital thing to build up an innings. There is also a tendency among them to lose their patience after crossing the twenty mark as we've seen them throw their wickets away after reaching the mid twenties or thirties instead of going for a big score. I've also observed when the Tigers go on defence they do nothing other than blocking the ball. Thus the scoreboard comes to a halt, as a result pressure mounts on the batters. To ease things up they need to be more resourceful in defensive batting, they need to find the gaps and keep the scoreboard ticking steadily. We haven't forgotten that South Africa is a very strong team consisting of many top ranking players. I think if the South African batsmen can score double hundreds ours should be able to score fifties if not hundreds. As far as the bowlers are concerned, they bowled with success in the first Test and despite the agonizing first day of the second Test they fought back well on the second day of the Test. Here I'd like to congratulate Mohammad Rafique for becoming the first Bangladeshi bowler to be a member of the 100 club. I almost gave up the hope of Rafique reaching the milestone as the play progressed into the second day. But it was really very rewarding when he finally achieved it. Our fast bowlers lack the fiery pace. In Test cricket raw pace is required to unsettle the batsmen. We've seen how Dale Steyn troubled our batsmen with his pace on a wicket that was hardly assisting him. I think it will help our bowling department if we hired coaches like Wasim Akram or Allan Donald to help our pace bowlers improve their bowling skills. Lastly, if we look at the first class career of our players we'll see they have very few big scores against their names. I think that is the reason behind their not doing well in Test cricket. The structure of our first class cricket is poor. We need to improve a lot in that area.
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