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F Waliullah

In the 3rd One Day International match between Bangladesh and West Indies, it was necessary to show a better batting performance. In the end, although the batting performance of the Bangladesh team looked a lot better than the first two games, but this time it was the bowling of the Bangladesh team that lacked the accuracy.

It must be said though that the pitch of the 3rd One Dayer was much better than the 2nd One Dayer, similar to the Chittagong wicket, except for the bounce. The bounce of this wicket was like any good batting pitch of the sub continent along with some uneven low bounce. It looked a bit dark with some dead grass rolled into it. That was the only difference between the 2nd and 3rd one day pitch.

It was Bangladeshi bowlers' achievement of some sort, that the West Indies could not reach the 300 run mark, but this West Indies line up also did not have the experience of Carl Hooper, and Shivnarayan Chanderpaul like they had in their recent successful India tour. Among the specialist bowlers of Bangladesh, Monjurul Islam really had gone for a few runs which is unusual for him given that he bowled really well in the first two games. But other bowlers - Tapash, Rafique and Naimur bowled relatively well in context
of the game.

In the batting department, there was a major change in the top of the order as a new opening pair started the innings once again. Ehsanul Haque showed his maturity even batting with an injured hand, but he was the first Bangladeshi batsman to go out. Wicket keeper batsman Anwar Hossain did his job of giving some stability in the batting line up. Although it would not have hurt if they had tried to score for some more runs by trying to score singles. But given the circumstances that one of them is playing his 2nd ODI match and the other is a debutant, they did well enough.

While Anwar Hossain put away the slower balls into the boundaries within the first fifteen overs, Mohammad Ashraful was fooled by the same type of ball and gave his wicket away right after getting off the mark. Sanwar Hossain got out after he was surprised to get a bouncer. His surprised look reminded of Atahar Ali Khan who was also out by getting a bouncer off an Agarkar delivery few years back. What all the specialist batsman should do is to be ready for anything - a bouncer, a slower ball - whatever - no matter
how odd it seems to get such balls at this level. Tushar Imran got his first opportunity to bat in the one day series and was out second ball lbw. Ehsanul Haque was also out in a similar fashion. What the batsman and also the coach should remember is that if these batsman go out leg before on these batting paradise type of wickets, then there is also increasing number of chances for them and also others to go out in the similar fashion in South Africa more often than not.

Alok Kapali scored his career best unbeaten 89 - third top score for Bangladesh at One Day Internationals after Mehrab Hossain's 101 and Shahriar Hossain's 95. His innings has shown just why Naimur Rahman could not be our main batsman in the middle order. But we should not be too happy with his innings as he batted under favorable batting conditions against a relatively toothless bowling attack and at the time, there was not much of a pressure on him to really go winning the match.

With this last match of the one day series, Bangladesh have finsihed playing all the one day games prior to the world cup. There are not too many positives coming out of this series apart from the fact that only youngsters - teenagers are performing. But a world cup is a big
tournament and some of the experienced players will have to come up forward and perform too. The Bangladeshi lineup must have some experienced players to guide these youngsters. Because there is really no answer to the experience.

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