With shorter boundaries, flatter wickets and weaker bowling attacks, there have been plenty of runs on offer for the batters in the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) and many local batters have cashed in, evidenced by the fact that eight of the top 10 run-getters so far are Bangladeshis.
But out of the eight, Tanzid Tamim is the only batter who is in the Bangladesh squad for the ICC Champions Trophy, scheduled to start in less than a month, raising doubts about the prospects of the Tigers for the forthcoming global showpiece event.
Dhaka Capital’s Tanzid is leading the run-getters chart with 420 runs in 10 innings and has impressed all with his aggressive batting.
After him, Mehedi Hasan Miraz is the next most successful batter from the Champions Trophy squad, who is 13th on the list with 258 runs to his name.
Skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto has struggled to consistently get into the Fortune Barishal playing XI, as has Chittagong Kings’ Parvez Hossain Emon. Shanto has even played as a wicketkeeper in a few games for Barishal but still has failed to warrant a position for himself.
Soumya Sarkar played his first match this season for Rangpur Riders this Sunday after a long lay-off due to injury while Jaker Ali, Towhid Hridoy, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah have played some good innings but overall find themselves in the middle of the pack in most metrics.
Things look better in the bowling department by comparison, with three Bangladesh team bowlers in the top 10 wicket-taker’s list. Prior to yesterday’s second match between Durbar Rajshahi and Sylhet Strikers, Rajshahi’s Taskin Ahmed was ruling the chart with 24 wickets while Sylhet’s Tanzim Sakib and Rangpur’s Nahid Rana were seventh and ninth with 11 and 10 wickets respectively.
Mustafizur Rahman and Miraz have had an average tournament with the ball while the performances of spinners Rishad Hossain and Nasum Ahmed have been underwhelming at times.
Many experts don’t feel that playing in the BPL should be regarded as preparation for the Champions Trophy but as the Tigers don’t have any ODIs scheduled before the marquee tournament, the BPL is their final chance to generate some momentum before the ICC event.
“It will be wrong if anyone thinks that BPL will be an ideal preparation. There are no quality foreigners in this year’s BPL. The teams don’t have quality bowling attacks as well,” opined former Bangladesh skipper and current assistant coach of the Rangpur Riders Mohammad Ashraful.
“If anyone scores runs, I don’t think it will give him much confidence. But it’s true that if anyone fails to score runs, it’s bad for him because you are failing to score runs against such bowling attacks,” he added.
Another former Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar was of the opinion that just being among matches would help the players in the Champions Trophy and felt the poor performances in the BPL is not a cause for concern.
“It’s important to play matches rather than to be just in practice. If anyone continuously plays matches, he remains ready for everything… In these tournaments, there will be players who will be in form and while some would struggle, that’s very normal. I don’t think it will have an impact on the next tournament,” Bashar said.
Daily Star
