Secret to Neesham’s instant success

There grumblings about lack of competitive cricket seems to have made way for entertainment as the 10th edition of the Bangladesh Premier League reached the half-way stage. 

Thanks to considerable change in weather conditions, the pitches in Dhaka have started to offer more for the batters who are now slowly gaining confidence and scoring freely, with Towhid Hridoy smashing the first century of this edition for Comilla Victorians against Durdanto Dhaka on Friday night.

The trend continued yesterday when Rangpur Riders posted the first 200-plus score of the tournament, against Chattogram Challengers, during the 27th game.

It was a collective effort from the Rangpur batters, with two of their overseas batters -- South African Reeza Hendricks and New Zealand's James Neesham -- scoring half-centuries in their debut matches.

Bangladeshi allrounder Shakib Al Hasan is also looking like getting his rhythm back, after having struggled earlier in the tournament, with a 16-ball 27 yesterday.

However, it was Neesham's all-round performance that eventually guided Rangpur to a 53-run win -- their sixth win in eight games. The Kiwi allrounder smashed a blistering 26-ball 51 and picked up two wickets for 32 runs to restrict Chattogram to 158 for six after Rangpur had posted 211 for three.

While both local and foreign batters have struggled to adapt to the conditions, especially in the first half of the tournament, Neesham feels it's his preparation and professionalism that helped him get into the groove right away.

"Obviously watching the videos of the opposition (helped), but to be honest its more personal responsibility to be professional and doing your preparation on what's coming," Neesham told the media after his man-of-the-match effort. "It's not up to the coach or the captain to tell me how to prepare for the game as its about personal responsibility. We have got all the technology these days to look through teams, and some guys are familiar with them. So it's playing your own game and trusting and obviously it worked."

Although Neesham initially struggled with the bat and was dropped early in the innings, the 33-year-old said that he had to take time before settling at the crease.

"It's something I have done in the past and not something I am not familiar with. It's about drawing on your past experience of playing in the conditions and potentially giving myself five to ten balls to get more used to the wicket compared to New Zealand or Australia where you can hit the ball from the word go. So, you get yourself a little bit of time to adjust with the surface. As I mentioned before, our top-order batters got us the momentum which allowed me and few of the guys to come and get going," he said.