We are not good players of spin: Mominul
Bangladesh Test skipper Mominul Haque said that most of the national team players lack the understanding on how to play quality spin after the Tigers suffered a 332-run thumping at the hands of South Africa, orchestrated by just two Protea spinners, in the second Test in Gqeberha today.
South Africa spinners Simon Harmer and Keshav Maharaj accounted for a total of 15 Bangladesh wickets as the visitors bundled out the Tigers for a meagre 80 in the first hour of the fourth day of their series-deciding Test today. The same spin-duo of South Africa had scalped a total of 14 wickets in the first Test in Durban, which the Tigers lost by 220 runs after being bundled out for their second-lowest total in Tests.
In both the Tests, South Africa operated with just spinners from both ends in the final innings and Bangladesh gave away all 10 of their second-innings wickets to these spinners.
This is, however, not the first time that Bangladesh suffered against spinners in Tests. Even at home, the Tigers had their ploy of making spinning track backfire -- case in point: a 224-run thumping against Afghanistan in Chattogram in 2019.
Asked if Bangladesh struggle against quality spin irrespective of conditions, Mominul was blatant.
"This is known to all [that Bangladesh struggle against quality spin]," said Mominul at the post-match press conference after their heavy defeat in the second Test today.
Spin has always been considered Bangladesh's strength in any format. However, Mominul did not shy away from reflecting the true picture as he mentioned that only a few players in the Tigers' ranks actually have the proper understanding of how to play spin.
"We are not very good players of spin. Maybe hearing this will hurt us but the truth is that other than one or two players, no one in our team can play spin well. Maybe we play spin but we do not have the understanding of the proper way to play spin," added Mominul.
The skipper also brought to the fore a technical aspect that might have been at play in overseas Tests.
"There is a fundamental difference between the wickets here and the wickets we get to play in the subcontinent. In the subcontinent, side spin is very effective. But here, the sidespin does not work well. Here [in overseas conditions] overspin is more effective.
"Our spinners usually are adaptive to bowling sidespin at our home condition. So, for them to come here and start bowling overspin requires a lot of technical changes which is probably not entirely possible in a few days," explained Mominul.
However, when asked the reason behind Bangladesh suffering such horrible batting collapses in both Tests against spinners despite playing spinners regularly in domestic cricket, Mominul stated the obvious -- that the standard of Bangladesh's domestic cricket is nowhere near international standards.
"Truth is, there lies a huge difference between domestic spinners and international spinners," Mominul said.