Bangladesh's batting collapsed in the last two games against the quality bowling of England and New Zealand in Dharamshala and Chennai respectively but notably, their continuous experiments in the batting order even in the biggest stage like the World Cup caught the attention of pundits and raised questions all around.
The Tigers successfully chased down a relatively small target of 157 against the Afghans with six wickets to spare but faced difficulties in pursuing a big target of 365 against England, and scored a below-par total of 245 on a relatively good batting track at Chepauk Stadium which was easily overcome by the high flying Kiwis with eight wickets in hand.
But surprisingly, Bangladesh shuffled their batting order in each of their first three games and thus questions arose.
The opening was fixed as rookie opener Tanzid Hasan Tamim and Liton Das began proceedings in all three innings and failed to provide a solid start every single time, but the batting order at number three, four and five kept changing.
Nazmul Hossain Shanto has scored lots of runs for the Tigers in recent times at No 3 but batted at four against Afghanistan, three against England and again at four against New Zealand.
Young Towhid Hridoy has played 20 One Day Internationals so far in his career and came out to bat at No 5 in 10 out of his 17 trips to the crease, garnering 348 runs at an average of 38.66 and strike rate of 94.3.
But Hridoy batted at No 7 against both England and New Zealand while in the two warm-up games, he was sent to bat at No 4 once and No 7 in the other.
Mehedi Hasan Miraz has been faring well with the willow in ODIs of late but his batting order too has seen constant change.
The all-rounder batted at three in the first game, five in the second and three again in the latest match Friday.
Skipper Shakib al Hasan came to the middle at five in the first game, four in the second and five again in the third.
However, the position of the other experienced batsman Mushfiqur Rahim was fixed as he batted at No 6 in all three matches, making two not out, 51 and 66 respectively.
During the post-match analysis of Bangladesh-New Zealand in ESPNcricinfo, India great Anil Kumble and Australia’s Twenty20 World Cup winning captain Aaron Finch raised questions on the Tigers’ planning.
Both said shuffling the batting order regularly affected the overall performance and the lack of a settled line-up hurt their chances.
“I think their experimentation with the batting line-up is costing them. They have a decent batting line-up. They have experience and some good young players. They just need one set of batting line-up. Today (against New Zealand), Mahmudullah came to bat at No 8 who has very good experience. They need to keep one batting line and give them some time. You can’t just experiment in every game in the World Cup,” said Kumble.
Former Aussie opener Finch also echoed the same statement.
“When a young player comes to the team, they should get the easier role. The experienced player should get into the top-order. In a longer format that could be No 3 or 4 as these positions could be quite difficult at times. So experienced players should take that responsibility and give young players some easier chances,” Finch said.
“I think Bangladesh are rolling their young players to the tough situation while Shakib and Mushfiq, their two experienced players, are batting at five and six. These two experienced players have played on for years. So don’t get into trouble at the first place by putting your inexperienced player at the top. Rather put your experienced players at the top, get the game on and be brave on your selection. If you are knocked over early on with experienced players, they you might lose anyway. But give yourself a chance by putting your best players at the top-order first,” he concluded.
Even Tigers vice-captain Shanto did not explain properly why their batting line-up is changing in every game.
When asked about this during the post-match press conference, he replied that the coach and captain can give a clear explanation rather than him.
Bangladesh will next face hosts and title contenders India in Pune Thursday.
