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After day 2 the first test is not looking good at all. Will now require a herculean effort just to draw the test on what will most likely be a wearing pitch.

Kriterion_BD wrote:After day 2 the first test is not looking good at all. Will now require a herculean effort just to draw the test on what will most likely be a wearing pitch.

The pitch has absolutely nothing for bowlers except maybe a bit of turn for spinners...... The first hour of BD batting was extremely boring..........

They had a defeatist mindset from the start. 8 batsmen, 2 of them pure trash (Imrul and Hom) and even filthier seamers, 73 avg Rubel + a guy who no one has ever heard of (Shahid) had disaster written all over it.

Shafiul and Robiul would be the two best suited for tests IMO, what do u think Krieteon?

Kriterion_BD wrote:They had a defeatist mindset from the start. 8 batsmen, 2 of them pure trash (Imrul and Hom) and even filthier seamers, 73 avg Rubel + a guy who no one has ever heard of (Shahid) had disaster written all over it.

I agree. Going with 3 specialist bowlers wasn't a great idea. The selectors should have picked Jubair instead of Hom. I don't think this pitch suits Shahid's kind of bowling and he doesn't have the pace to really trouble the Pakistani batsmen. I saw the stats of this guy "Litton Das" and I think he deserves a shot.
Tbh I feel they should prepare better pitches........

And Shakib's been disappointing with the ball.............

Okay, BD is now in eighth position in the ICC ODI rankings. PAK on 9.
And we're below Ireland in the ICC ODI rankings now.........

grant wrote:Okay, BD is now in eighth position in the ICC ODI rankings. PAK on 9.
And we're below Ireland in the ICC ODI rankings now.........

We're tied with Windies for 7th, just decimal points behind. But I suspect Pak will earn a point or two after the Zim series. So Zim gotta help us out by beating Pak at least once. Pak won't gain points even if they win 2-1 I think. Windows will fall further. But our next 6 games are toughies against India and SA. IND might send another A team tho most likely and we should beat them 2-1 at home.

jaybro wrote:Shafiul and Robiul would be the two best suited for tests IMO, what do u think Krieteon?

Anyone would be better than Rubel + Shahid. I'd rather take Tapash Baisya and Nazmul Hossain. Zimbabwe opening with Chibabha and Hammy would be a more penetrative attack than this.

I'm gung ho, I'd have played Taskin + Mustafizur. Yes, probably way too early but we don't play that many matches like top sides but even the few we play might burn out a couple teenagers. But I guarantee a TM duo would taken a couple scalps and at worse would have had similar figures but beaten the bat a lot more and created far more chances than Rubes and Shahid. I couldn't figure out how Shahid made the A team, let alone the Test Side.

As for Shafiul and Robiul...both are good in places the ball swings. Robiul is toothless in BD conditions, as is Shafiul. Even Trent Boult looked ordinary on these pitches back in 2013...swung the new ball a bit only.

You can't do anything about the ball not swinging but you can make a quicker bouncier surface like the Dhaka pitch Zim played on a few months ago. But facing Wahab there would be a rough ask.

You've got to feel sorry for the bowlers. But at the same time, they haven't been bowling in the right areas consistently.................

Kriterion_BD wrote:You can't do anything about the ball not swinging but you can make a quicker bouncier surface like the Dhaka pitch Zim played on a few months ago. But facing Wahab there would be a rough ask.

They should prepare pitches like that more often............

Giving credit where it is due, Tamim and Kayes did bat well.................