Batters forced back to ‘learning’ phase

The fourth day of the first Test between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in Sylhet on Monday was just about completing mere formality -- at least that's what was ensured by the recklessness portrayed by Bangladesh batters the previous day. 

Sri Lanka needed just five wickets while the Tigers were still 464 runs behind a daunting target of 511. Bangladesh eventually could only manage 182 in 49.2 overs in their second innings, succumbing to a massive 328-run defeat. 
  
While the materialisation of the inevitable outcome seemed only a matter of time, the way the surface later aided batting should have made Bangladesh batters realise how badly they had thrown the game away without even showing any intention to put up a fight.   

Overnight batter Mominul Haque reached his 17th fifty in the format, remaining unbeaten on a 148-ball 87. The left-hander looked swift, comfortable and in control almost the entire time he batted yesterday, smashing 12 boundaries and a maximum altogether. He played cover drives off pacers Kasun Rajitha, Vishwa Fernando, and even used his feet against Lahiru Kumara -- all three of whom who seemed unplayable to Bangladesh's top-order. 

Even Mehedi Hasan Miraz, who scored a 50-ball 33 and had a 66-run seventh-wicket stand with Mominul, played with ease till he nicked one back to the slip cordon off a Rajitha delivery. 

The demons of a greenish Sylhet surface that terrified the Tigers' batters to the point of forcing them to throw their wickets away when the cherry was new and shiny, perished eventually as the day progressed as it was supposed to. 

But only the Sri Lankans seemed to have been aware of this widely common phenomenon of Test cricket as their batters Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis struck centuries in both innings while Bangladesh batters repeated their buffoonery.  

"In both the innings, the top-order failed. It's not that only we suffered. The top-order of both sides struggled in the game. However, this can't be an excuse," Bangladesh skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto said after the day's play in Sylhet yesterday. 

It is true that the Sylhet surface had enough in store for bowlers early in the innings that the top-order of both sides struggled. But the difference was that Sri Lanka batters had the temperament to capitalise and play their natural game when things slowly swayed to the batters' favour. 

Bangladesh skipper Shanto was on the money to say that, if thought carefully, they will have a "lot to learn" from this Test. There is probably nothing better to do after surviving a total of just 100.5 overs the entire Test.