The right kind of natural game
On November 20, a day after Shadman Islam got his maiden call-up to the national side before the first Test against West Indies in Chattogram, Bangladesh head coach Steve Rhodes was hard at work with the youngster in an optional net session.
"Don't think about it; just play the ball," he kept telling the left-handed opener, who was fine-tuning his batting against the off-spin of fellow uncapped player Nayeem Hasan.
Nayeem made his debut two days later, but Shadman had to wait till yesterday to earn the cherished cap and walk out to open the innings with Soumya Sarkar.
During the course of his 199-ball stay, he put on a 64-run stand with Mohammad Mithun, who could be heard on the stump microphone telling Shadman "to just keep playing your normal game".
The normal or 'natural' game mantra is a favoured one of the Tigers, but it has also caused some grief in Test cricket when even seasoned campaigners failed to tailor their instincts to the match situation. Fortunately for a side that seems perennially in search of a opening partner for the currently injured Tamim Iqbal, Shadman's natural game looks perfectly suited for his position.
Making the immense step up from domestic first-class cricket to facing West Indian pacers in a Test match, Shadman was largely untroubled over the course of an innings that lasted the better part of four hours. A feature of his innings was the finely honed and decisive footwork and the clear choice of which balls to play and which to leave, both of which have been lacking in the three openers tried this year -- Imrul Kayes, Liton Das and Soumya Sarkar.
"The ball will come… [I thought] I will play the same way I do in first-class cricket. I didn't think about anything else," Shadman said after the day's play.
His 76 -- the seventh-highest score by a Bangladeshi on debut -- should be a shot in the arm of domestic cricket in Bangladesh. It has long been bemoaned that domestic cricket was of too low a standard to feed the national team, but the 23-year-old is through and through a product of the first-class system.
He finished as the top run-scorer this season in the National Cricket League, and the two centuries he scored -- 157 in five hours and 52 minutes and 189 in seven hours and 41 minutes -- for Dhaka Metro served as a blueprint of how he batted yesterday.
Perhaps that was why Rhodes had insisted Shadman not think too much about what he was doing; he was already doing it correctly.
It proved that even if domestic standards leave a lot to be desired, there is no replacement for honing one's approach over hours and hours in match situations.
"There is no disappointment. Everyone wishes to score a century on debut. I tried to do my utmost for the team and bat accordingly. Maybe I couldn't do it all… couldn't finish the way I needed to," he said of missing out on becoming the fourth Bangladeshi to score a century on debut.
He actually did not seem too disappointed, perhaps because he knew, as the rest of the team will too, that if he continues in this vein there will be many more opportunities.
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