Bangladesh captain Mominul Haque praised the Tigers' team effort during the course of the drawn Test match against Sri Lanka as the two-match series will now be decided in the Dhaka Test, starting Monday.
Bangladesh managed to restrict the Lankans just under 400 runs in the first innings even after losing the toss on a solid batting track as off-spinner Nayeem Hasan took career-best six wickets.
All-rounder Shakib al Hasan also bowled superbly with economical spells.
In reply opening batsman Tamim Iqbal and No 5 Mushfiqur Rahim got hundreds, while the other opener Mahmudul Hasan Joy and stumper-batter Liton Das scored impressive half centuries to take the first-innings lead.
Later left-arm spinner Taijul Islam bowled brilliantly on day five to produce some late excitement but eventually it ended in a draw.
Excessive heat and humid conditions posed great challenges to the players of both teams.
“The takeaway from this match will be we played as a team overall. If we can play well together as a team more then good results will come. This team effort will help us in the coming matches. The pitch was difficult for bowlers. It was difficult to get wickets here. The role of our spinners, Shakib bhai, Taijul and Nayeem, was very crucial as we were fielding first. In their first innings, they were scoring runs quickly at one point. Then Shakib bhai came and checked the run rate with tight line and length. Then Nayeem got wickets and (Thursday) Taijul bowled really well. Overall our spinners performed really well in this match,” said Mominul during the post match press conference at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium Thursday.
The skipper’s lean recent patch continued as he was bowled for just two from 19 deliveries.
Before this Test, Mominul scored only one fifty-plus knock in his last 12 innings and totaled just 165 runs with a below par average of 15.
But the Tigers skipper replied confidently again regarding his form.
“I am not that much worried about my batting,” the diminutive batsman said.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne rued missed chances of posting a big first innings total and gave credit to Bangladesh bowlers.
"If you take first innings, we could have done much better. As a side we should have put up a big score, unfortunately we couldn't do that. But thankfully the bowlers turned it around. If you take the bowlers, the two fast bowlers did really well, in this heat it's not easy but they put their hands up and did really well," Karunaratne said after the match.
"The spinners did well in patches but were guilty of being a bit loose, but they will definitely take the lessons from this match. If you play positively you can try and win a match. We tried to do something differently and put them under pressure, but we played some poor shots and then we had to change tactics. We unfortunately couldn't put pressure on Bangladesh on the last day.”
