‘We paid the price for taking it easy’
Dhaka, Jan. 27: Nonplussed by the speed at which they fell apart to lose the second Test on the fourth afternoon here on Wednesday, Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan later admitted they had not been able to put together a consistent effort with the bat, especially when it counted.
“We didn’t bat well for two hours, that’s why we lost — one hour in the first innings, and an hour before lunch today. Every time someone got runs, but we need two or three guys to score in each innings. That’s something that we have to improve on,” he said.Shakib agreed they had relaxed watching Shahadat Hossain and Mohammad Ashraful put on 72 runs this morning. “We took it a little easy — there were a few smiles in the dressing room when Shahadat and Ashraful were at the crease. At some point we all relaxed.
“But once we got to the crease in turn, we found it was not easy at all.”
On Zaheer Khan’s match-winning display, the Bangladesh captain said, “Zaheer is a different bowler in Test cricket and in ODIs. We all found him very difficult to face in the Tests. He is one bowler who always finds the right areas and gets the old ball to reverse swing as well. When I got to the wicket my plan was to bat, but the ball that got me I thought was there to be hit. I just mistimed it.”
Shakib’s wicket accelerated Bangladesh’s collapse, their last seven wickets falling for just 22 runs and the last five for a mere three runs. “Perhaps we at some point stopped thinking about the game. We should have realised the wicket would get tougher. We just didn’t cope with the first 15 balls.
“That was always the message from the coach, but I think Zaheer bowled really well,” he said.
 We thought we could handle 4-5 overs of his, all credit to him.
“It was a good batting track, we just did not apply ourselves.”
AGE CORRESPONDENT
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