Bashar remains serious
Al Amin from Canterbury
Bangladesh's final game in the NatWest Series against Australia tomorrow might be of academic interest, but the Tigers skipper Habibul Bashar said that their mission was not over yet."We may be out of the tournament, but that doesn't mean we will have a laid back approach. Rather we will try to give some of the players who did not play much in this tournament a chance. We will field the best possible side and try to emulate the feat we achieved against the world champions at Cardiff," said Bashar after the morning's training at the Canterbury Cricket Club ground on Tuesday. Australia, whom Bangladesh stunned by five wickets at the Sophia Gardens on June 18, have already confirmed the July 2 final at Lord's against hosts England. Bangladesh, however, lost their second match against Ricky Ponting and company by ten wickets at Manchester on June 25. Bashar informed that the team would be picked after the final training session on Wednesday. "There is still a lot of grass left on the wicket. Besides, the practice wickets, which normally give an indication how the main wicket will behave, offered bounce and pace. So, I'm not sure whether we would play two spinners," said the Bangladesh captain. The cricketers enjoyed a lively three-hour training despite the absence of their coach Dav Whatmore, who is now in Melbourne at the bedside of his gravely ill father. "We had a pretty good session today. It was fairly short and sharp as we have been doing for the last eight weeks," said Stuart Karppinen. The Australian fitness trainer also said that he was enjoying the additional role of coaching, especially bowling in the nets, the team in Whatmore's absence. Karppinen, who has had the misfortune of his name mis-spelt more often than once, is however considered as a very good bowler on the team. And even an English newspaper branded him as the second best bowler in the Bangladesh team behind Mashrafee-bin-Mortuza. "It's very easy to bowl in the nets," said Karppinen, wearing a broad smile on his face, after testing left-arm spinner Manzarul Islam with a good short-pitched delivery that the batsman ducked awkwardly before falling on the ground. "They (the pace bowlers) are very young. Mashrafee is only 21 and Nazmul (Hossain) is 19 while Tapash Baisya is just over 22, but they are definitely developing. They are not bowling a consistent line which is giving the opponents one and a half chances in every six deliveries," he said. "We have struggled to take wickets on the whole tour which surprised me. In the last game when we bowled against England that was probably the best first 10 overs on the whole tour. "We also drew Marcus Trescothick to play some false shots for the first time. He skied one and it was probably a half-chance and Andrew Strauss pulled quite a few deliveries that could have gone anywhere. It was not that we bowled badly, we just have not been getting the rewards we should have got."
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