How Bangladesh crafted partnerships, dominated sessions for win
Visitors expected to fold inside three days, but pull off historic upset on fourth day
Darwin showed survival of the fittest and Bangladesh showed what grit and determination could translate into.
The historic win by Najmul Hossain Shanto’s men against the mighty Australians was built as much on individual brilliance as on winning the sessions and building partnerships.
The reverberations of the nine-wicket win will be felt around the cricketing world for a long time and not just because ‘the minnows’ who were not expected to last three days almost won in that duration.
Looking back, it almost seems like the visitors folding up for 54 in their second innings to lose their practice match against a Cricket Australia XI was deliberately done to make Pat Cummins’ men drop their guard. But even if that were not so, the way Bangladesh outplayed Australia has some serious lessons for overseas teams travelling Down Under.
For starters, over the three-and-half days, Bangladesh dominated nearly all eight sessions of play. They never let Australia build any major partnerships in both of their innings with the highest being a fifth-wicket partnership of 55 runs between Steve Smith and Alex Carey in the first innings, the only 50-run partnership of the innings and another 56-run partnership for the fifth wicket between centurion Cameron Green and Carey in the second innings.
In contrast, Bangladesh had a 102-run partnership for the second wicket, a 93-run partnership for the third, a 66-run partnership for the fourth, and two more 45 plus-run partnerships in their first innings and then an unbroken match-winning partnership of 53 runs in the second.
That in effect made all the difference in the end, one team unable to stitch together more than one substantial partnership and the other piling up partnerships one after the other.
And that was because all the Bangladesh players stepped up and contributed, with Mehidy Hasan Miraz standing out, scoring 65 in the first innings and taking a fifer in Australia’s second by superbly exploiting the rough created by Aussie speedster Mitchell Starc. Medium-fast bowler Hasan Mahmud finished with nine wickets, scalping the openers in both innings and rightly winning the Player of the Match award.
Earlier, Tanzid Hasan scored a magnificent ton in the first innings as most of the top-order batsmen gritted their teeth and ground out the runs to pile up 426, a mountain that proved too high for Australia to negotiate after being made to toil in the Darwin heat and humidity for 138 overs.
Cummins was spot on when he said post-match that Australia had been outplayed in all departments of the game including fielding where the hosts dropped as many as five catches.
"They were a much better side than us this week," he said.
"I thought they outplayed us in all facets, really.
"They were really patient, just didn't really let us back in, held onto their catches.”
As for Bangladesh’s jubilant skipper Santo who made a brilliant 84 in the first innings, he credited the team's improved pace bowling for the remarkable result, saying it reflected a major shift in Bangladesh's approach to Test cricket.
"That is the biggest change for Bangladesh in the Test format. Earlier, five years ago, pacers didn't want to play Tests. But we've been playing lots of Test cricket, and they are giving importance to the Test format. They want to play, want to perform, want to be world-class. That is the mindset they now have," he said.
What makes this win even more remarkable is that while Australia were playing with a full-strength side, Bangladesh were missing their key fast bowlers Nahid Rana, Shoriful Islam and Tanzim Hasan Sakib through injury.
But all that did not matter in the end.
The win moves Bangladesh to 4th spot in the ICC Test rankings and they might even start dreaming of making the WTC final now.
