Ashraful, a masterful century.
Chasing 521, that innings was made of rock solid balls. We doff our hat to you sir.
Sakib’s wants to make love to this pitch, a 5fer when he bowled and now it looks like he’s going to start building his family a home in the middle.
Murali’s bowled 5000 overs, at least, but still cant get past a couple of 21 year olds.
Vass prized out Ashraful, but doesn’t look like he will get another unless the batsmen make a mistake
Herath’s cheap but no oomph in his bowling.
Mahelas sitting at slip, thinking about how to shorten the Pakistani tour while leaking a 100 runs in the session.
Some guy in commentary said some teams have chased 400 and 380 in the last couple of weeks. I think they are lying, that’s just IMPOSSIBLE in the 4th innings.
“You sound like you have the jitters”, Huh, What ?
No idea what you are talking about.
Nothing to see here, carry on.
Well, finally we just finished… DARN… Pretty frustrating to watch, it was.
Or is it that finally the Bangla boys are coming good? In the last year, they certainley played some good cricket, though they didn’t win any…
Bloody hell, this match slipped under the radar a bit here, but just been reading about it. What a game. the Bangla boys have balls…
When victory started to become a possibility the Banglas had the expected collapse losing 4 for 10 runs.
Mahela’s captaincy was lacking as usual. What he needed to do was keep the field up and stop the Banglas getting the single. Let them go over the top if they wanted to. A player like Ashraful hates to be kept quiet and is prone to rash shots. Instead Mahela deployed sweepers, let them score at 3 an over which was enough to satisfy Ashraful. I don’t want to take away from the superb shots Ashraful played but his problem is always temperemant and concentration. On a flat track an astute captain would have exploited this.
Having written much about the batting, a few comments on the bowling:
Vaas – clever and bowls to the field but now lacks the pace when the wicket has nothing to offer.
Prasad – has the speed and agression but needs some fine tuning of his radar and to add guile. I hope we have a decent bowling coach to help him.
Herath – hardly carries a threat but can keep an end tied up with better captaincy. Only warming the place for Mendis anyway.
Murali – another 10fer but should not be bowling so many overs at this stage of his career.
Sach> Bangladesh played well, but SL helped them to do that, first innings our batting was pretty woeful.
And during the chase we let them get into the position they got. We had 500 runs to play with, even today Mahela bowled Murali without a slip at times and at least 2 chances went there. It was just weird.
TOB> Ya a pretty low key match, crowds were poor as well. Bangladesh played really well to give us a good run. But when things got too hectic they lost their heads.
Inside>I agree with you, Mahela had some really defensive fields. We started the day with 1 slip, Murali bowled with no slips at times. I mean they still had a 150 runs to get, surely you have to back the worlds best bowler to get a wicket against the lower order of the worst team in the world.
Dammika really impressed me, the only way we could have got wickets was through reverse swing cuz there was nothing for the quicks or spinners. The spin was slow and bounce very true.
He showed a lot of aggression but you are right the radar is a bit off at times. That should come good with experience.
Agree with the assessment of the other bowlers.
Once Mendis is back Murali’s work load should ease. Dont mind seing Thilan Thushara in there as well at some point.
Good show by BD in the face of an impossible target.
New year greetings to you Damith.