Soumya, Riyad took leaf out of Tamim’s book

Tamim Iqbal had blitzed his way to a sublime ton during Bangladesh's first innings, hitting the ball at will. However, one could easily take the wrong lesson from Tamim's knocks. Even during his ton and 74-run knocks, Tamim showed a perseverance and hunger to do well which caught the minds of today's centurions Soumya Sarkar and Mahmudullah Riyad.

The short-ball barrage from the Kiwis had worked to perfection in the first innings as none of the other batsmen bar Tamim applied themselves according to the demands of the longest format of the game. Tamim then showed the way in the second innings too and this time played a different knock, showing a pronounced survival mode strategy. Both Mahmudullah and Soumya took note.

When talking about how he decided to live with the numerous short deliveries bowled into the rib cage, Mahmudullah said: "I want to mention a point regarding Tamim. He played really well. At one point when Wagner was bowling bouncers from round the wicket. Tamim plays pulls and hooks really well and he survived that period. I really liked that aspect of his batting and I tried to figure out if I can do the same thing." Like Tamim, he wanted to play to the merit of the ball in the second innings and not go for shots just to dominate proceedings.

Soumya said that Tamim was the best amongst the Tigers when it came to pull and hook shots which allowed the senior batsman to do well but what he learnt most from was the way Tamim tried to preserve his wicket. He opined that Tamim's innings can be held as doctrine by rest of the Tigers' squad in order to find their own individual ways of battling it out in pressure situations.

"If everyone can see the way that Tamim bhai batted at the start [that's important]. He has the best pull and hook shots amongst us but the way that he survived, there is a lot to learn from that," he said. Even though he is comfortable with the pull shots, Tamim consistently looked to get behind the line of the delivery, often shuffling across to adapt to Kiwis' short-ball strategy. "The matter is how each player will survive. If there is mental strength then it is possible to survive," Soumya said about the significance of Tamim's knocks both for his innings today and the Tigers for the upcoming Tests.