Taijul’s knock shows the mirror to batters
In the last ball of the morning session on Day 2 of the Sylhet Test yesterday, Taijul Islam ran a couple of runs off pacer Vishwa Fernando to reach 41, crossing into the 40s for the first time in his Test career.
Taijul, who will complete a decade in the Bangladesh red-ball team this year, has batted 75 times in Test cricket including his innings against Sri Lanka.
Prior to yesterday, he had reached the 30s only twice before, his best being a 39-run knock against West Indies in Chattogram in 2018.
With a paltry Test average of 9.56, Taijul is a tail-ender in Bangladesh team whose main job with the bat is to give some support to the recognised batters lower down the order and occasionally do the job of a night-watchman.
But a look at Bangladesh's first innings scorecard shows that Taijul was the Tigers' best batter on display by far, top scoring with 47, almost double of the second best 25 from Liton Das.
Taijul also didn't slog his way to scoring those runs as he survived 80 balls after being sent in as a night-watchman late on Day 1 and batted for almost two-and-a-half hours.
While the left-hander deserves credit for the grit he showed against quality fast bowling from Sri Lanka, his innings also highlights that perhaps there weren't that many demons on the pitch and the failure of the Bangladesh batters was caused by their lack of application.
Although the seven recognised batters in the Bangladesh camp could muster only 85 runs together, even they admitted that the pitch wasn't as difficult as the team's scorecard suggests, said the batting coach David Hemp.
"All the batters are saying that the wicket is good. You get value for good shots. Couple of balls in the last session stayed a bit down. But those were wide deliveries. Apart from that, if you don't execute properly with the ball, you get punished," Hemp said after the day's action.
Not just Taijul, even tail-enders Khaled Ahmed and Shoriful Islam contributed, making 22 and 15 respectively to give the total some respectability.
Bangladesh had already lost three top-order batters in Zakir Hassan, skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto and Mominul Haque cheaply in the 10 overs they had to bat late on Day 1.
Resuming on Day 2 on 32 for three, Bangladesh's hopes of surpassing Sri Lanka's first innings tally of 280 was virtually over after they lost three more batters -- Mahmudul Hasan Joy, Shahadat Hossain Dipu and Liton -- in the morning session.
Taijul's innings and late order's contribution kept the deficit to 92 and then the bowlers reduced Sri Lanka to 119 for five by the end of play.
Although, Sri Lanka are in pole position heading into the third day with a lead of 211, Hemp is holding out hope that a quick collapse of the visitors followed by a completely different batting performance from the hosts will turn this match upside down.
"We got wickets in the end, but we were unlucky not to pick up more wickets. They are leading by 211 runs. If we can get early wickets tomorrow [today] morning, we could be looking at a 250 chase.
"I think they were guilty of getting stuck at the crease or playing at balls that weren't hitting the stumps. It is something that we will discuss overnight into tomorrow [today], so that we are really clear about how we are going to set about being aware of how to cope with their bowlers," Hemp said.