[chinaman]

So, how do we improve? If we care to go through all the posts made since the caribbean tour, we'll find many invaluable suggestions encompassing from extra batting coach to psychologist.

Bangla Mostan made an startling observation in his recent article (Has the patience finally run out of Dave?) that even though we somehow manage to show decent performance in test matches and ODI series, it is the limited over tournaments that we fail consistently time and again.

Bottom line, however, remains the same, to make serious improvements in batting and bowling and to make more effective use of the line-up.

If we take a closer look at the batting line-up, we'll see a batsman short more often than not. Gullu, Ash, Nafees, Rajin & Aftab formed the core in the CT and the practice matches leading to it. Weaker individual performance warrants even longer line-up.

The way other top nations form the attack, it is readily apparent that most if not all of them consistently bank on three specialist pacers. Whereas we deploy only a maximum of two, shuffling between Tapash, Tareq and Nazmul.

So, we are not only a batsman short but also missing a paceman too.

Many teams also employ one or two part time bowlers from the top order. While our bowlers regularly give away tons of runs, not using such part timers would be a definite waste in our quest for consistent respectable showing. Let's put aside the winning for a while.

Six batsmen, three pacemen and a keeper should be the norm for us as it has been for others as well. The last spot goes either to an allrounder or to a specialist spinner depending on situational demands.

Some might argue that Rana is the sixth batsman. I seriously doubt such notion as he is replaced so often with the so-called allrounders. I guess the think tank considers Rana along with Musfiq and Mahmud to be the so-called allrounders, or multi-skilled for that matter.

An extra batsman may be able to offer a little more resistance while three pacemen and a spinner will form the main attack getting help from the part timers. A keeper is always expected to be good at batting. We may end up giving away few more runs because of the part timers, but we may score a few more runs from the sixth batsman as well.