Bangladesh's meek surrender in the second test yesterday not just surprised their skipper Shakib Al Hasan but also caught india paceman Zaheer Khan off guard
Bangladesh's meek surrender in the second test yesterday not just surprised their skipper Shakib Al Hasan but also caught india paceman Zaheer Khan off guard
The press meet enclosure turned briefly into a courtroom. Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladesh's captain, was unburdening himself.
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"When Shahadat (Hossain) and (Mohammad) Ashraful were batting, we may have got slightly relaxed. They had made batting look easy. We were laughing and chatting in the dressing room and at some point, we relaxed and we were not thinking about the game as much as we should have done," Shakib said.
The angry reaction, which he should have expected with that confession, seemed to have hit him by surprise. He couldn't quite deflect the heat of the tough questions of how an international team can relax at that crucial juncture. And he looked a very forlorn man. Your heart went out for him. If only he and his batsmen were a bit more careful in the morning.
Their mental laxity had surprised even Zaheer Khan. "Looking at the conditions and how they started, it felt they could have batted out that phase and made things tough for us but...," said Zaheer after his seven-wicket haul.
Fine start
Bangladesh had got off to a fine start courtesy the plucky Shahadat and an unusually restrained Ashraful. It was India who were feeling the heat u2014 a catch went down, an overthrow ran to the boundary, Zaheer couldn't break through with his reverse swing and the other bowlers hardly looked threatening, a semi-defensive was set, a team-huddle was called for and India were being pushed to the corner.
It wasn't quite a make or break moment yet as Bangladesh were still in arrears but at that point, you thought about the injured Indian duo. It was this critical moment that Bangladesh deflated like a punctured tyre. It happened so quickly that you almost missed it.
Shakib played a forgettable shot. There was a man at square-leg and he swung straight to him. Was it just a case of a wrong shot execution - it can happen to the best of the men - or was it a shot of a man too "relaxed" that he just lost the plot?
Mistimed sweep
"I play sweep shots usually, but this time I just mistimed it," he said. The moment he chose to play it was, perhaps, at fault. It exposed a vulnerable lower order to an inspired Zaheer who blew them away. Perhaps, the fact that Zaheer was surprised, and the press angry, that Bangladesh, a team known for such collapses, played the way they did yesterday is an acknowledgement that Bangladesh have played some good cricket in this series.
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