Victory Day cricket. It was a much better performance for Bangladesh cricket team on the victory day of Bangladesh. I am saying this because the first innings total of 194 runs certainly sounds much better than a total of 139 or 87. But the disappointing thing is that the West Indies bowlers did not bowl well, the fielders misfielded and gave away more runs than they should have. If one takes these things into consideration, then it would seem that taking the Bangladesh total to over 200 run mark would have sounded a lot better than 194. But then again, it would be asking for a little too much, wouldn't it?

But with the kind of a start that Bangladeshi batsman - and not only the opening pair gave, their ending - all of their ending did not look as good. The opening partnership brought 43 runs - the third highest opening partnership for Bangladesh in test match cricket. But the wicket that ended this partnership, it was a because of a technical defficiency on the part of a makeshift opening batsman - Al Shahriar. He usually gets out for pretty low scores in One Day matches for this particular technical flaw. Hannan Sarkar  - the other opening batsman, then just followed suit and showed his own technical flaw in his batting. Habibul Bashar then showed his flaw - thus three in a row, all showed their limitations.

Then there was a nice little partnership with a lunch break in between of 60 odd runs between Bangladesh top scorer Sanwar Hossain and Mohammad Ashraful. They played well just as well as Al Shahriar and Hannan Sarkar at the start, but then again Ashraful showed just how little temperament he has. He scored two boundaries in the over, and then was trying to hit yet another boundary over the top of mid off applausing the big crowd that came in, but was surprised to see a spectacular catch. Only it was not necessary to give that kind of a chance to the fielder at mid off in the first place. Then Sanwar Hossain gloved a short pitched ball that was going to the leg side. Alok Kapali, the first test's first innings half centurian, gave an easy catch at slips trying to defend a ball that was not even on the stumps. So, they just gave their wickets away.

Khaled Mashud has always been a good player with temperament. And it was mainly because of him that Bangladesh could get past the 150 run mark today.
But in the end, he gave his wicket away just at the time when everybody was looking to see his first test fifty. This is exactly what he does always in test matches since his and Bangladesh's debut in test match cricket. One day, he will retire from playing in international cricket and he will suddenly find out that batting with such responsibility and having such a good temperament, he had missed out on scoring even a test fifty, not to mention a hundred. And among all the test players, Khaled Mashud is the only consistent player over the years with the right temperament. Sometimes one would feel that he deserves to get a test hundred. I guess the day he will get that test hundred, it will be the day that Bangladesh would be able to draw a test match.

And the day that all the top five batsman of Bangladesh learn to play consistently and patiently, it will be the day that Bangladesh wins a test match.

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