It’s again a tale of failures of the Tigers betters when New Zealand bailed them out only for 137 runs and reached the winning target losing only two wickets with 13 balls to spare in the second match of the ongoing Tri-nation cricket tournament at Hagley Oval, Christchurch.
It was back to back defeat for the Tigers in their preparation matches in the Tri-nation tournament but opportunity even now remain for them to make a comeback.
When World Cup is knocking at the door (15 days to go Tigers will kick off their mission) Tigers yet to discover an ideal, hard hitting T-20 batters, specially an opening pair.
In the dress-rehearsal matches ahead of the World Cup, not only opening batters, none of the performers top off with rendering their role, when whole batting line-up despondently collapsed, as it looked full Bangladesh was playing with a bunch of novice cricketers.
For last few months, in fact for a long there was a huge hue and cry to have an ideal opening pair and lot of experiments also were done but result is almost zero.
In the first match against Pakistan the opening partners could draw out their innings to 25 runs playing 4.2 overs, with Mehidy Hassan Miraz scored 10 off 11 when Sabbir scored 14 off 18 balls, but it is not at all good looks or sensible T-20 batting.
In the second match opening pair was changed against New Zealand (on Sunday), Meshidy and Najmul Hossain Shanto were sent to open the innings dropping Sabbir but they could not change the scenario when the new partnership could manage only 12 runs before to be departed with Mehidy got out for 5 runs playing as many balls.
Though at the beginning against New Zealand, both the openers looked a bit very positive and expected they would carry out their innings to a reasonable stand and riding on that Tigers will be able to throw a moderate target for the opponents. But they could score only 12 runs.
Despite the early departure of Mehidy, Shanto tipped off to play a T-20 innings as he gave the impression with giving good encounter to hosts’ bowling attacks with 33 of 29 balls.
But regrettably Shanto disappointed all in his first outing since August playing a dubious shot to give Chapman a simple catch to be the 100th victim of Sodhi.
Then the rehearsal of mysterious batting display started when none of the Tigers’ batters could stay on the crease for a long, as they backed to the pavilion after managing a 137 runs playing 20 overs.
In the post match reaction captain Shakib Al Hassan also spelt out the horrible batting display about the batters and specially, he talked about the top orders when they could not handle well the hosts’ spinners well.
“Batting is important area we need to improve and will keep on working on it. It is hard to keep energy up when you lose two games.
Shakib was very open to exacting the responsibility of the top order batters saying – “The top three has to put hand up and bat till 15-16 overs. We never got any momentum.”
Captain was also very concern with the upcoming World Cup after their back to defeats and in next two matches they have to live up when he said, “It is hard to keep energy up when you lose two games, but the World Cup coming up the next two games will be crucial for us.”
So, opportunity still left for the Tigers to prove them with a strong bounce back when they have two matches in hands.