Tigers in total control

Morning shows the day, some say. Well, if that was always true, Bangladesh would have had a horrid day in the field on the second day of their one-off Test against Afghanistan in Dhaka on Thursday.

Starting the day on 362-5, the Tigers could only add 20 runs before they were bowled out, meaning their hopes of piling on a huge total on the Afghans went down the drain.

However, those were the downs and then came the ups. The Bangladesh bowlers’ good display combined with some rash shot-making from the Afghanistan batters saw them bowled out for 146, and then a fine partnership between Zakir Hasan and Najmul Hossain Shanto saw Bangladesh end the day with a 370-run lead with nine wickets in hand.

Bangladesh will hope to do on the third day what they could not do on the second day – pile on the runs on Afghanistan and set them an impossible total. However, there is no set target from the Tigers as when asked the question, Ebadot Hossain just left it up to fate.

Although the pacer did say that their initial plan came to fruition.

“We lost wickets but we scored a lot of runs. The weather was a bit gloomy, and we thought at the time that we would go in and get their wickets as quickly as possible. This was the plan,” he said.

Afghanistan head coach Jonathan Trott though accepted that they had a mammoth task ahead of them but also left it up to what happens on the next day.

“It’s going to be difficult. We’re going to have to ball really well tomorrow morning and then have a mammoth effort with the bat. But anything’s possible. We’ve seen some funny things happen in cricket before, but we are going to have to play out of our socks,” he said in a press conference after the day’s play.

However, the spotlight would go to the wickets column of the day as 16 wickets fell on Thursday compared to five on Wednesday. The pitch, which looked like a graveyard for bowlers on Wednesday, suddenly started to spew fire on the second day morning.

Especially Mushfiqur Rahim’s dismissal in the morning, where the ball bounced sharply to catch the batter’s gloves and then head on to the safe palms of a slip fielder, showed that there was some juice for the pacers to extract.

And that is what Bangladesh did. Ebadot perfectly used the bounce as all of his four deliveries came with short deliveries, with three of them cramping the batters and leaving them unable to deal with the deliveries.

“We got the bounce from the wicket. As there was bounce and pace in the wicket, we tried to use that in our bowling. And they (Afghan batters) struggled with it,” Ebadot said after the second day.

After Afghanistan were rattled out for 146 with Shoriful Islam, Taijul Islam, and Mehidy Hasan Miraz, who reached 150 Test wickets in this innings. picking up two wickets each besides Ebadot’s four, Bangladesh did not enforce the follow-on and came out to bat again.

They lost Mahmudul Hasan Joy (17) early after a cameo but from there, Najmul and Zakir added 116 runs in just 126 balls to ensure that Bangladesh had a sizeable lead by the end of the day.

Zakir reached his fifty off 56 balls while Najmul took 61 but both of them ended the day on 54 off 64 balls.