Tigers living the dream

The Tigers displayed the beauty of Test cricket on the opening day of the first Test against South Africa at Chittagong yesterday. It's always too early to decipher the fate of a Test match after the first day's play, but as former national captain Gazi Ashraf Hossain said: it was a dream day. Yes, it was a dream day that the country had been anticipating for so long.

Such beauty was unfolded by the Bangladeshi bowlers that Faruque Ahmed -- the chief selector who was also the national skipper -- was forced to say, "It's unbelievable". Unbelievable! Because of the character the Tigers showed to turn the table on South Africa after the visitors went to lunch on 104-1.

"If you tell me to describe the best part of the day, I must say it was the comeback after the first session which was something new," said another skipper-turned-selector, Habibul Bashar.

"Beautiful, tremendous and overall a dream day and undoubtedly the bowlers deserved credit for that. But I also thanked the man who stood behind the stumps. Litton (Das)'s first catch was outstanding. That was the first breakthrough and Taijul Islam must thank the young keeper for that fantastic catch at the second attempt. Overall he [Litton] was so bright. We had been talking about concentrating session by session and it was the perfect example of what we actually wanted," said Gazi Ashraf.

"The boys showed that they have the mental toughness to bounce back from a tough situation. I think everybody chipped in to make it a day and especially Mustafizur. He showed no sign that he was a debutant," praised Faruque.

Nobody knows better than Bashar about the days when Bangladesh surrendered in situations like the first session yesterday.

"What could have been the regular scene was that we concede 500-plus runs after their strong start, but the boys showed maturity to write a new chapter. I especially want to focus on Mustafizur because his presence proved that you need pace bowlers to bowl out your opponents, so we should encourage our pace bowlers," said Bashar.

Ashraf however didn't forget to point out some loopholes in the great success.

"The ground fielding completely contrasted Litton's brilliance. Our fielding coach should focus on our slip fielding, which is a long-standing headache for the team. If I feel sorry for [Mohammad] Shahid, then I must say Likhon [Jubair Hossain] failed to rise to our expectations. He was lucky to take three wickets but the young leg-spinner needs to work hard."

He also had some suggestions to make the first day's success meaningful.

"We need to survive the first ten overs on the second day's morning. In my opinion, the South African bowling attack does not have as much variety as we have. What they will try is to test our batsmen with pace and short-pitched deliveries. We have to be careful regarding fishing the outside off-stump deliveries. The bounce is good, so our batsmen may be tempted to play shots, but they should show patience and gain a first innings lead and focus on calculative batting," suggested Ashraf.