Bangladesh will go into the second and final Test match against New Zealand in Dhaka with their all guns blazing after the first Test in Chittagong ended in a draw on Sunday.
The Tigers got everything they desired except a victory, but that did not deter skipper Mushfiqur Rahim from expressing his satisfaction over the five days’ proceedings.
‘I think we have got 90 to 95 percent output from this match,’ Mushfiq said in the post-match press conference. ‘Still there are a few rooms for improvement, which we will obviously work out.
‘But at the moment I am very pleased. Sohag [Gazi] played brilliantly. Mominul [Haque] got a big hundred and today Sakib [al Hasan] scored a fifty. I could not have asked for more,’ said Mushfiq, who held the wicket responsible for their inability to push for a win.
‘It’s true that we had an opportunity,’ he said. ‘But there was nothing in the wicket for spinners. If there was any assistance the result might have been different.’
The newly-laid wicket at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury stadium remained batting-friendly even on the fifth day, providing batsmen from both sides ample opportunities to score big runs.
The two teams together struck 27 sixes in the match, which equalled the record of an India-Pakistan Test in Faisalabad in 2006.
First-innings hero Mominul Haque, with his unbeaten 22 in the second innings, became only the third Bangladeshi batsman to score 200 or more runs in a Test match.
Mohammad Ashraful currently holds the record with his 190 and 22 not out in the drawn first Test against Sri Lanka at Galle earlier this year. Mominul puts Mushfiq, who scored a double hundred in the same Galle Test, to third in the list with his 181 and 22 not out.
Mushfiq hailed both Mominul and Sohag Gazi, who sealed a permanent place in cricketing folklore by becoming the first man in the history of Test cricket to score a century, grab a hat-trick and a five-wicket haul in the same Test match.
‘I like them [Mominul and Sohag] because they speak little and prefer working more,’ said Mushfiq. ‘In the past we had had many individual achievements but the team lost as we could not translate them into a team success.
‘We have been working on this for the last two-and-a-half years and now we are getting some results,’ said Mushfiq.
The skipper reserved special praise for Sohag, the man of the match, who finished the match with an unbeaten 101 and eight wickets in two innings.
‘I have seen him play some good cricket. But now he is playing really smart cricket. I am very happy for him,’ he said.
The second Test will be played in Dhaka from October 21 to 25, followed by three one-day internationals and a solitary Twenty20 International.
-With New Age input
