It all started going Bangladesh's way when Khaled Mashud - the Bangladesh captain won the toss for the first time in this tournament. He elected to field first and restricted the West Indies batsman to just under 250 runs. It must be said that though the Bangladeshi fielding has rooms for improvement, still some fielders have converted the half chances into full ones and got rid of the West Indies batsman quickly. The conditions helped the bowlers all along on a pitch that had lots of moistures in it. Proof is Brian Lara - who scored a hundred off 45 balls the last time that he played against Bangladesh in 1999, has managed to score only 46 runs off 76 balls.

I have to say that this was a great achievement to show the world what our bowlers and fielders can do in a world cup. But as the batsman did not get the chance to bat at least for 30 overs - it remains to be seen whether the batsman could have really gone for the win or were they just playing along with the team spirit that the Bangladesh team has shown. At least with this fine effort, the foreign media will be showing some respect to our players.

I remember the last rained off match that involved the same teams when Bangladesh lost 4 wickets for just 90 runs in 17 overs after West Indies scoring 275 runs in 50 overs. In that game that man - Ricardo Powell had scored 88 runs off 50 balls. And in this game he scored 50 off just 31 balls.

Thinking in long terms, we needed this match not to be abandoned like this. We needed our batsman to try and bat the full 50 overs. But unfortunately this did not happen. Whether we can beat a side in an International match remains to be seen. Especially since our batting order is not clicking, it is not clicking at all.

The good thing about the match was that now we know that there must be a real change in the top order. And that is particularly not Khaled Mashud coming in to bat at number three. Al Shahriar is just not capable of handling the pressure of opening an innings. And yet, he is not the one who has huge technical difficulty. It is the batsman at the other end - whether it is Hannan Sarkar or Ehsanul Haque or both - are technically just not sound enough to open or at one down position.

On the other hand, this is more surprising that Mohammad Ashraful, who came to bat at three, scored two beatiful shots - which were also proper cricket shots and Ashraful was full of confidence. I just wonder how come somebody like Ashraful who is just an 18-year old kid can show this much of confidence even after he was so pressurized by the team management to not to go for pull shots and eventually was not chosen to be in the final eleven in the world cup opener for Bangladesh. Ehsanul Haque also played some proper cricket shots, along with Sanwar Hossain, but Ehsanul has this big weakness in his batting technique. In fact, Al Shahriar was the only batsman who did not try to play proper cricket shots. It goes to show just how fragile the mental condition of Al Shahriar has as a batsman.

Nevertheless, he is a very good fielder and has taken an excellent catch to get rid of Brian Lara. It is never easy to take catches off your own bowling and both Khaled Mahmud and Alok Kapali caught and bowled the batsman brilliantly. Monjurul Islam also tried to do similar thing but unfortunately the batsman did not touch the ball with the bat in that case.

The bowlers, especially Ehsanul Haque bowled really well - using his head. Experience was showing when Khaled Mahmud was bowling. Similarly, inexperience was showing when Talha Jubair was bowling. But nobody could understand why Monjurul Islam showed the same kind of inexperience that Talha Jubair was showing at the depth. May be in the near future Ehsanul Haque can be included in the side only as a bowler. Mohammad Rafique bowled well for a spinner on this wicket. Alok Kapali bowled only 2 overs - at the depth when Talha went for 17 runs in the 45th over.

In short, Bangladesh bowled and fielded well, showed a good fighting spirit, but was saved from humiliation by the rain. But the thing that still needs further improvement in bowling is to bowl well in the depth overs. 73 runs were scored off in the last 10 overs. And the West Indies total was only 244/9 in 50 overs. Add the 27 extras and you can sum up with a pretty low score in 40 overs.

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