Bangladesh’s First Away Test: a Postmortem

Shahryar Khan

April 26, 2001

In January, this year, I asked Wayne Philips, the former test cricketer and the present coach of CBCA cricket academy, to comment on Bangladesh's getting the test status. The question was critical in a single point of view for Australia was one of the countries who was against it once and gave a delayed support lastly. Philips's remark let drop one thing very lucidly; Bangladesh will improve but it would take time, nothing spectacular would happen all on a sudden-so, the expectation ought to endure the vicissitudes of this greenhorn test playing nation. Well, that is okay with us; we are not expecting Bangladesh to defeat Zimbabwe; we are not still expecting they must have the ability to level up the series; finally we don't wait for a drastic change in favor of Bangladesh that will turn over all calculations. But what we wanted from them is to play test cricketof course in a sensible way, with the least application of cricketing knowledge.

In the second innings Aminul Islam's wayward shot proved to be the prime cause of the debacle and Akram Khan only strengthen it baited by the leg-side flick. Naimur Rahman is currently struggling with his form, therefore, he fell a quick prey to the Zimbabwean seamers. At that stage much was expected from Mushfiqur Rahman who has a fair standing to select which ball should be spared and which should be punished according to the merit. But he failed in both innings trying to play ambitious shot in one of them at a period when it was expected that he stayed as long as possible. The tails could provide some handy assistance to Javed Omar if they could just hang on; instead they flaunted their ability to play power shots and eventually were cut off like some novice schoolboys. What Manjurul could do was not trying to lift the ball repeatedly; had he have some patience, Javed Omar might have reached the three-figure landmark.

Yet, now-a-days, we see most of the decisive test matches do not run up to the fifth day; if we consider that Bangladesh did not exhibit that badand above all the records are still accompanying them alike the inaugural test. Javed Omar's accomplishment is something we can boast about and obviously Manjurul's bowling that had drawn the unleashing compliment of Carl Rackemann, the coach of Zimbabwe.

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Players/Umpires

Akram Khan

Aminul Islam

Aminul Islam

Mushfiqur Rahman

Naimur Rahman

Series/Tournaments

Bangladesh tour of Zimbabwe

Teams

Bangladesh