'Don't count us out'
Even Bangladesh fast bowler Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, when speaking on the eve of the second ODI against West Indies, said that getting their opponents out for 199 runs in the first match was 'too good', and maybe something that will not be repeated.
So when yesterday Bangladesh dismissed the tourists for 132 to beat them by 160 runs at the Sheikh Abu Naser Stadium here, West Indies skipper Darren Sammy seemed resigned to the fact that Bangladesh had outplayed them in a manner not thought possible, while insisting that there was fight left in them.
"They played some good cricket and they are showing us how to play one-day cricket on these pitches. They have assessed these conditions well, I guess they would know it, and they played accordingly," he said at the post-match press conference.
The ever-smiling and polite skipper identified his team's poor shot selection and the Anamul Haque-Mushfiqur Rahim partnership as the key to why they leave Khulna 2-0 down, after losing the first match of the five-match series on Friday by seven wickets.
"I think it's about being more selective. If you look at the kind of players we have, once we stay at the crease we are going to score runs, but we keep getting out," said Sammy. "If you look at the way the match went, we got two early wickets and then the captain [Mushfiqur] and Anamul, they came and put on a good partnership. In any cricket partnerships are very important. So far we haven't been able to put good partnerships together. And we haven't bowled as well as we could, so hence the result is 2-0 to Bangladesh."
As in the first game, West Indies were clueless against spin, not a new problem for the men from the Caribbean. In the first match they surrendered eight wickets for 97 runs to spin. Yesterday, the figure was 8 for 95.
"We have not rotated the strike against spin as much as we could over the last few years. But we get better at it when we spend time at the crease. So far none of our batsmen have done so. In order to score runs you must be present at the crease," said Sammy.
But Sammy hoped that a change of scenery in the hustle and bustle of Dhaka might help, and that they would have to improve in all departments to be competitive against the Tigers. "We are going to regroup. Once we go out and execute the way we know we can and have done in the past, we could beat any team. At the moment we are not doing that, we are losing. So we definitely have to do that quickly. In order to win the series we have to win all three games.
"Probably it's a good wake-up call for us and we'll come back harder. We are 2-0 down but we're not out. It would not be a wise thing to count us out because we have been in similar situations before and we have bounced back."
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