[Raynman]

Originally Posted by Baundule
Siddons' contribution to our 'success' in the test arena is highly overrated. We had some good innings from Golla, Ashraful, Bulbul, Pilot and a few others around Basher in the pre-Siddons era. And we had the same this time around from Junaed, Rahim, Riyadh around Shakib and Tamim. Shakib and Tamim were already better (in terms of ability) players than the previous generation. SIddons' job with them was pretty easy, he did not have to CREATE them. As a team, we have failed to sustain pressure. We did play close matches before (Multan, Fatulla...) and we did play a few in Siddons' time as well. We do still lose miserably from a position of advantage.

The effect of all our 'improvement' myth is still the same; big teams do not think us as a threat in the test arena.

Correct. Another myth is the ability to stretch the match to the 5th day. Whats overlooked is that in some matches our opponents chose to not follow us and get batting practice and some matches we barely avoided the innings defeat. Other than the 3 wicket loss to NZ, there really wasn't a test match in the Siddons era where we had a realistic chance of winning.