A lesson begging to be learnt

Perhaps a more articulate speaker than Soumya Sarkar was needed after a day on which one batsman -- skipper Mushfiqur Rahim -- showed immense strength of character before the infirmity of his teammates finally wore him down.

Mushfiqur's innings of 85 off 161 balls was the blueprint of how to bat on the Galle International Stadium wicket on the third day of the first Test yesterday, and it may have amounted to much more if he was not running out of partners before eventually perishing in an attempt to farm the strike with number 10 batsman Subashis Roy at the other end. The result was that Bangladesh were all out for 312, 182 runs behind Sri Lanka, before rain prevented any play after tea.

Soumya himself had resumed the day on 66 with his skipper but he played a hesitant pull shot to the first ball he faced from a pacer, Suranga Lakmal, to offer a catch to fine leg; a shot that the left-hander admitted was a mistake.

Shakib Al Hasan seemed to misread a googly from chinaman bowler Lakshan Sandakan but his eagerness to put bat to ball -- he had flashed his way to a 17-ball 23 while Mushfiqur was on nine off 48 -- saw him chasing it down the leg side and getting a feather-edge through to the keeper.

Liton Das hit a four off the sixth ball he faced but off the 13th played a leaden-footed, airy shot to Rangana Herath to be caught at slip.

Mehedi Hasan Miraz was part of a 106-run stand that averted the follow-on, but he survived a simple chance at nine after having hit his second and third balls for four.

Mushfiqur, meanwhile, did not hit a boundary for his first 88 balls during which he scored 22 at a strike rate of 25, before making 63 off the next 73 balls at a strike rate of 86.

When asked about the difference in approach between captain and players, Soumya simultaneously hit the nail on the head and missed the point completely.

“Mushfiqur bhai played proper Test cricket today. He took his time at the beginning. Although many of us hit a boundary at first, he survived for a long time and then hit a four [six],” he said, before going on to illustrate his, and perhaps the rest of his teammates', inability to adapt to the situation.

“Maybe some of us got a bad ball at the start and we hit a boundary, and maybe they bowled better at Mushfiqur bhai. In Tests you have to wait for the bad ball but maybe he got fewer bad balls. There was no plan [to attack while Mushfiqur defended].”

The point which he missed and perhaps which a more senior player could have been pressed on was that it was not as if the bowlers turned into wizards while Mushfiqur was batting and became ordinary for the rest.

Like Kusal Mendis in Sri Lanka's first innings, Mushfiqur paid due respect to the pitch, which is slow and at the hands of skilled operators like Herath, Sandakan and Dilruwan Perera and demands that time be spent in the middle before runs can be scored.

Unlike Mushfiqur, Mendis's innings was backed up by a lot of supporting roles.

Instead of these considerations, there were excuses -- Shakib was supposedly unlucky -- and promises to try better.

“Of course there is a lot to learn from him,” said Soumya about his captain. “He is an experienced player and he is our captain. We are trying; how much we are succeeding is for others to judge.”

 One has to wonder how Mushfiqur would judge it.