The Roach factor

Kemar Roach becomes leather whenever he faces Bangladesh on a cricket ground.

The 33 years old Barbadian made his Test debut against Bangladesh in 2009 at Kingstown and since then the right-arm pacer has done most of the damage against the Tigers.

Roach has picked up 249 wickets so far from 72 Test matches he played. His bowling average is 27.18 and strike-rate is 53.3; he picked up five wickets in an innings 10 times.

But whenever he faces Bangladesh, the numbers got better.

In 10 Test matches against Bangladesh, he picked up 41 wickets. His bowling average comes down to 19.60 and strike-rate become 42. He has got four five-wicket-hauls against Bangladesh.

Before the start of the ongoing series, Roach’s inclusion was doubtful, he was playing for Surry in the English county championship where he picked up injury.

He was declared fit few hours before the start of the match and included in the squad, in his very second delivery Roach dismissed Mahmudul Hasan Joy for a duck. In the Antigua Test, Roach picked up two wickets in the first innings where he dismissed Joy and Nazmul Hossain Shanto in his first two overs which set the tone of the match.

In his second innings, Roach took five wickets and broke the resistance put by Shakib Al Hasan and Nurul Hasan.

Roach is the highest wicket taker at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua with 50 wickets and against all the 10 oppositions he played, he is most successful against Bangladesh.

Though his highest wickets came against England, he bagged 61 wickets but he played 16 Test matches against them.

Former pacer Tarek Aziz Khan who played three Test matches and 10 One Day Internationals for Bangladesh told The Business Post that Roach’s bowling action makes him hard to handle.

“Roach’s bowling action makes him difficult to read. He can extract extra bounce from the surface, his can make the ball pop up. The batsman often gets confused to judge the pace of the ball”, he said on Sunday.

But Tarek feels that in most cases, Roach wins the mind game against the batsman,

“I think he can read the weakness of Bangladesh batsmen very well. He is playing against Bangladesh for a long time and he knows how to put them in trouble. Bangladesh batsmen also show extra caution while playing against him” he told The Business Post.

“Roach wins the mind game most of the time, I think that’s what made him more successful”, said the former right-arm pacer.

Nazmul Abedeen Fahim, Cricket Advisor also thinks that sometimes Bangladesh batsmen become extra careful while handling Roach,

“Roach is not like the way he is before. But Bangladesh batsmen often show extra caution while playing him, an extra fear works on their mind while facing Roach. But he picked up few wickets which were mostly caused by careless shot selection from batsmen. He must get the credit for his success but at the same time Bangladesh batsmen also have their flaws”, he told The Business Post.

“ Bangladesh had problems facing pace bowling, it got improved in the middle but now the weakness is exposed again”, added Fahim.