I had promised Shameran that I would write a match report for the first match but frankly speaking I left the stadium so enervated that I didn't do anything for th next 12 hours but sleep. Anyways, I thought I'd share some observations with you since very few actually saw the match.
First of, we should have easily won the match. We lost not because the Kiwis played better but because of one simple reason; we don?t know how to finish off the opponents. But the loss did not disappointment me as much as the way we went about the game, especially the batsmen.
The batting debacle was epitomized by Aftab. Touted as the next best thing in BD cricket, this guy lacks total cricketing sense. He comes in with the side at 16/1 and goes about trying to hit every ball out of the ground. He hits two boundaries and just when he should have started accumulating the runs and rotating the strike, he pushes the ball straight to mid on and rushes for a suicidal single.
And there lies the rub since all the batsmen, barring from Nafees who I'll talk about later, seem incapable of milking the bowlers for singles; all they want to do is hit the ball out of the ground. Another point of reference is Dhiman's knock; the kid definitely has potential but you can't possibly be trying to slog the ball when you're 150/5 and you still have twelve more overs to play. Now c'mon this is basic cricket sense god damn it!
Aside from Davis (who is a class strike bowler), not a single Kiwi player impressed me. But much like their seniors, the Black Caps Kids played like a team who had a collective goal to achieve and played with cool heads. And much like their seniors, our batsmen acted as prima donnas and gave the match away.