Talent is useless if there is no discipline in batting
Bangladesh’s miserable West Indies tour ended with yet another mere capitulation as they suffered a huge 296-run defeat against the hosts in the second Test in St Lucia on Tuesday.
The visitors lost eight wickets for just 34 runs in the final session of the fourth day to be dismissed for 192 in the second innings, handing West Indies a victory with a day to spare at the Beausejour Stadium.
Tamim Iqbal shared 110 runs with Mominul Haque in their fourth-wicket stand, but once they both fell to the same combination of Sulieman Benn and Garbriel Shannon, respectively for 64 and 56, Bangladesh collapsed immediately.
The West Indies bowlers did a quick job in wrapping up the innings two balls before the scheduled ending as Benn completed his sixth five-wicket haul to finish with 5-72 runs.
Gabriel and Jerome Taylor also played their part, dismissing Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim, the two other batsmen who could offer some resistance.
Given the manner in which some of the batsmen were dismissed, it gave an indication that they were in a rush to finish the game quickly in order to take some breath before catching the home-bound flight.
Skipper Mushfiq, however, sees no lacking in effort, rather in skill, which he said may be not good enough at this level.
‘It’s not that we were not trying,’ Mushfiq said after the match. ‘We were doing whatever we needed to do well in the field. Still if we don’t get any result you can assume that we are not good enough.
‘Top officials can change us if they want because this is something that we cannot control. What we could control…that is the game in the field and we failed in that aspect,’ he said.
In an extra-ordinary outburst of anger against his team-mates, Mushfiq said he does not see any use of so-called talented players, who cannot translate their talent into performance.
‘Yes, our players have talent,’ said the skipper. ‘But if you cannot apply it on the field what is the use of it. If there is no discipline in the batting you cannot expect result. These are all useless talent.
‘The reason for our continuous failure is that we cannot keep up the momentum. This is what happened today. We were in a good position from where we thought we can start well next day. But at the end of day we repeated the same mistakes.
‘We tend to forget Test cricket is not a game for an hour. It’s a five-day game and you have to take it session by session.
‘They were almost 500 runs ahead and we had our back on the wall. There was no chance of our win, but we could at least fight and take the game to the second session of the fifth day.
‘That would have been a good experience as well. Now we were denied of that chance also,’ lamented the wicketkeeper-batsman.
Mushfiq regretted that Tamim Iqbal and Mominul missed a chance to take a greater position by wasting their hard work.
‘The way they were playing we thought we could go into the fifth day with seven or eight wickets in hand. But suddenly the partnership ended. I agree this can always happen. But there is a limit of everything,’ he said.
‘They were working so hard. If you notice you would probably see Tamim scored his fifty with just one four and a six. If they could stay just an hour longer things could have been very different.’
-With New Age input
