Nine for 39
Mahmudullah Riyad finds his castle uprooted as he hung his bat lazily at a delivery from Keegan Meth during the third day of the first Test between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe at the Harare Sports Club yesterday. PHOTO: AFP
Nine wickets for 39 runs; the last five for 0. No matter how one may choose to elaborate on that bare statistic, the numbers tell the story in its fullness. Were there any redeeming factors, any gross umpiring injustices that could reduce the batsmen's culpability on the third day? Well, skipper Mushfiqur Rahim may feel aggrieved with his leg-before decision, but he was still beaten by movement and one umpiring error out of ten is not far short of par for the course.
Did the pitch sprout spitting cobras overnight? It did not seem much different from the evening before when the Tigers scored 95 for one in 25 overs. The only visible difference was that the four-pronged Zimbabwe pace attack, unlike on the previous evening, put their best foot forward on the third morning. The procession of Bangladesh batsmen was down to a combination of nothing more than disciplined bowling, the Tigers' technical deficiency against the moving, bouncing ball and an unwillingness to adapt to the changing match situation.
While Kyle Jarvis is a class act, Shinghai Masakdaza, debutant Meth and Elton Chigumbura are honest triers and what the four did yesterday was hit a length and line -- short of length outside off allowing the seam and swing to do the damage -- that saw the Bangladesh batsmen struggling. The whole stadium knew that the Zimbabwe bowlers had hit their stride on the third morning, but the Bangladesh batsmen seemed not to have gotten the memo.
Mahmudullah Riyad's dismissal, after Jahurul's luck ran out with a leg-before decision that could have gone either way, was a legacy of one-day cricket. Meth bowled a short delivery outside off, and as if triggered by muscle memory Riyad hung his bat out. The ball moved away a touch and took the under edge of the vice-captain's bat before cannoning onto the stumps.
In this match, a batting master-class was put on by Brendan Taylor, and his innings was more notable for the amount of balls that he left alone than the flashy shots he played. Shakib Al Hasan seemed to be looking to smother the swing of the medium pacers by skipping down the wicket from the first ball he played, and for a while it seemed to work. Shakib only left one out of the 13 deliveries he faced, and the sudden bounce outside off that got him out caught at gully may have been survived by a batsman more amenable to letting some balls go early in the innings, especially on a pitch that has seen a fair bit of movement from the seamers.
Mohammad Ashraful, whose batting raised hopes of a patient innings like Taylors' and his own magnum opus -- the 190 in the recent tour of Sri Lanka -- then departed to an ill-advised pull shot off Masakadza that found the fielder at mid-wicket. He indicated to the umpires upon his dismissal that he did not see the fielder and perhaps suggested that the fielder, Malcolm Waller, changed position after the bowler began his run-up. That however was beside the point -- Bangladesh had just lost trump card Shakib, and an aggressive shot was the last thing needed. Also, the top edge could have gone anywhere, regardless of phantom fielders.
Mushfiqur was unlucky because the ball seemed to be missing leg, but Nasir Hossain's dismissal, when the team were 55 short of the follow-on target and him the only specialist batsman left, was perhaps the most irresponsible. He wafted at a harmless Jarvis delivery off the fourth ball after lunch and got an edge through to the keeper. The rest of the bowlers folded meekly to Jarvis and Masakadza without adding a single run.
Yesterday's debacle indicated that Bangladesh are not willing to change tack when the conditions change -- a major failing in a format stretching five days. A deeper worry is whether, like in the corresponding match in 2011, the Tigers are a little complacent against Zimbabwe, believing that they can dominate by right. Robiul Islam's heroics in the hosts' second innings is salt to the wound as it shows how possible it was to create history, which because of the batsmen will probably repeat itself.
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