Cricketers

By winning their first ever Test match and thus the series they astounded the whole world and it is quite clearly visible that our players are gradually maturing and are able to take the pressure of playing against much better sides.

The performance in the one-day matches was simply outstanding. The way they recovered and then won the cup after a 'two down and one to go,' is exceptional. Not many teams in the past achieved this remarkable feat. Now if we could only match our performance and reputation with consistency, hopefully we will be able to show the world the strength we have within us. I would like to thank all the players for their hard work, and the patriotism they showed in performing so well. I would also like to thank the BCB for the labour and time they put upon our cricketers, and for undertaking several programmes to improve the quality of our cricket, even at the lowest level. And finally credit goes to Mr. Whatmore who has become a hero to us.

Previously, I used to support other countries in international cricket, but now the performance of Bangladesh is so good that I take pride in supporting my country and can argue with others whenever they speak against Bangladesh in international cricket.

I hope from now on our home team will not disappoint us and will emerge as a competitive international team in world cricket.

In order to further improve our team performance the teams for ODI and Tests need to have variation. Since one day cricket is about scoring maximum runs within limited overs, we need that sort of batsmen who can hit the ball accordingly and the bowlers maintaining tight line and length preventing too many extras and keeping the pressure on the opposition. I really have to congratulate our bowlers for that since they hardly gave away extras and kept the pressure on the opposition, pretty professionally.

However, in Test cricket the batsmen have to be more patient and need to rotate the strike if boundaries are hard to come by. One thing our batsmen lack is concentration. They need to develop the skill of staying at the crease and bat throughout instead of getting out after scoring a quick fire 50 or 100 runs. This is how we can hopefully improve our average score in both one day and Test matches.

For sustainable improvement of our cricket, long term pragmatic planning and its implementation should get the highest priority.