Can Bangladesh save the Dhaka Test?
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Joy is batting with 38 runs from 79 balls
Let me do some calculations first.
Still need 101 runs to avoid an innings defeat. At the end of the second day, the Bangladesh team still scored 101 runs less than South Africa's runs in the first and second innings of the Mirpur Test!
Bangladesh's first innings ended at 106 runs. In reply, South Africa scored 308 runs in the first innings Varane scored a century. Mulder lifted the bat in the joy of a half-century. The duo put on 119 runs for the seventh wicket to rescue South Africa from the initial shock. The batting collapsed as before at the beginning of the second innings. Opener Sadman Islam was out early. Mominul Haque was dismissed for a duck in the same over. Whether you call the way captain Nazmul Hossain Shanto got out after being set on the wicket funny or ugly is up to you. The captain's job in the team is not just to toss - he also has to score big runs with the bat. Perhaps the BCB can now send such a letter to Nazmul Hossain Shanto!
The way the Mirpur wicket behaved throughout the second day made one thing clear: to score runs on this wicket, you need two main things - brains and skill. If you can connect these two, you can score a century or half-century on the spin-friendly wicket of Mirpur. It is possible to score big runs. South Africa's innings is an example of that. Varaine and Mulder were not in a hurry to score runs. They waited for the ball. They played with soft hands. They did not try to go forward. They ran for one or two runs by finding gaps in the fielding. And they succeeded. That is how South Africa's score crossed 300 on the scoreboard.
Bangladesh can only follow South Africa to save this match now.
Can Bangladesh walk that path? If they succeed in achieving that goal, the hosts may be able to give South Africa some challenge in the fourth innings in this match. And if they cannot, then the cost of printing tickets for the fourth day of this match will be a bad investment!
The relief is that the way openers Mahmudul Hasan Joy and Mushfiqur Rahim are batting is giving Bangladesh courage. Both are set on the wicket. Mushfiqur is unbeaten on 31 runs, batting in ODI style. Joy is batting on 38 runs from 79 balls. On the current course of this innings, Mushfiqur became the first Bangladeshi to score 6,000 runs in his Test career.
Bangladesh is expecting something bigger from Mushfiqur on the third day in this milestone match - a century, a big century!
