TRENDS ANALYSIS
Follow UsBangladesh were 90 for no wicket after 14 overs against India. This was their best start in this World Cup. This was their best start while batting first in an ICC event EVER. In seven ODIs before this, Tanzid Hasan had not crossed 16 even once. Thanks to a lengthy net session a night before the game, a belter of a wicket, some freebies offered by the Indian attack, and bazball-style come down the track and hit the good length stuff, Tanzid crossed his maiden fifty off 41 balls. Bangladesh looked set to post 300, if not something even higher. In what then seemed like a minor blip, Kuldeep Yadav trapped Tanzid in the 15th over.
Things then took a 180-degree turn. One after the other, Bangladesh batters loitered around to accumulate dot ball after dot ball and scored a mere 116 runs in the next 30 overs. A run-rate of 3.87, low enough to put a few modern-day red-ball outfits to shame. None of Bangladesh’s three, four, and five could score at a strike rate of even 50. And they faced 65 balls between them.
This is not a one-off. Five games in, none of Nazmul Hossain Shanto (67.3), Mehidy Hasan Miraz (69), Shakib Al Hasan (67.5), and Towhid Hridoy (56.2) have a strike rate that will cut it for a team wanting to compete in the tournament.
In fact, Bangladesh’s batters, from #3 to #5, have collectively scored 4.1 runs per over in the World Cup so far. This is 0.6 runs per over lower than the next worst Afghanistan, who have the most outdated white-ball players in the tournament at three and four. And yet somehow, even Rahmat Shah and Hashmatullah Shahidi, for all their weakness, found a gear good enough to get their team across the line against Pakistan on a big stage.
It is not often that Bangladesh get off to a flier. Leading into the World Cup, they had the lowest batting average in the first 10 overs among the participating teams. But quite often in this tournament, their middle order has gotten into a rut. Among the top five innings in the tournament featuring the most dot balls, Bangladesh feature a staggering thrice.
Now, one can understand them being outplayed against South Africa in Match 23. Chasing a huge total, they went hard upfront and lost early wickets. After a while, the game became a celebration of Mahmudullah, the ICC tournament legend, who has been the only saving grace for Bangladesh in the tournament and who was not in the scheme of things until Tamim Iqbal was ruled out for one final time. Mahmudullah is the only proper batter for Bangladesh, with a strike rate of above 100 in the tournament.
Against New Zealand, none of their batters batted at a strike rate of 100 or above. They are the only team with two matches out of five where no batter has scored at above a run-a-ball (against Afghanistan in their first game was the first instance). Shakib scored 40 off 51 against New Zealand, a decent knock on paper. But 24 of these runs came through boundaries, and he scored a mere 16 of the rest 46 balls. A Non-Boundary Strike Rate (NBSR) of 34.7. On the other hand, Daryl Mitchell, in the second innings, before killing the game with quick boundaries, went at an exceptional NBSR of 71.9.
It has been everyday knowledge that Bangladesh batters lack the power-hitting wherewithal needed in the modern day. Hence, it will not come as a surprise that they have hit the least percentage of balls to a boundary in the tournament. What has actually let them down is that their abysmal boundary-hitting abilities have been combined with the lowest non-boundary strike rate.
In a combination of the worst of both worlds, Bangladesh batters have been the worst side in hitting boundaries and the worst side in finding gaps to get the run-counter ticking. They have defended 42.8% of balls in overs 11-40, the most among all teams. This is roughly 77 balls out of 180. Stuck in an outdated template, Shakib Al Hasan and his men are neither here nor there.
Their NBSR against pace is the second-worst after the Netherlands (38.1%). In the mother of all ironies, Bangladesh’s NBSR against spin (46.3%) is the worst among all teams. This is the team that tempers their home conditions to favour spin at the cost of the development of their power-hitting. The new kid on the block, Netherlands, not used to facing quality spin back home, have done better than five other teams in this regard.
If we break it down further into 10-over blocks, in none of them, Bangladesh have a boundary ball percentage above the tournament average for that phase. And in only one (overs 11-20), they have an NBSR above the tournament average. This is largely due to Litton Das and Mushfiqur Rahim’s partnership against England in their second game.
It is a travesty that in modern-day cricket, Bangladesh has had only one batter striking above a run-a-ball. But Bangladesh fans, after witnessing their team's humble opposition at home, would have expected their batters to at least be competing at this stage. But their batting has been so dull so far that it makes one wish for an option to simulate their innings.
What might have also contributed to Bangladesh’s freefall with the bat is the random number generator they have used to decide the batting order. Shanto has alternated to bat at three and four. Mehidy has walked out to bat at a spot different from his last innings in every game. He has batted everywhere between #3, #4, #5 and #7. And it has nothing to do with match-ups, as we saw against Afghanistan in the first game when the right-hander Mehidy walked out to accompany Litton Das after the left-handed Tanzid was dismissed. Shakib Al Hasan has alternated between #4 and #5. And Towhid Hridoy moved between #5 and #7 before being dropped for Shakib against South Africa. In fact, in a 20-match career, he has batted at five different positions since the Asia Cup in September.
After losing the last four games, Bangladesh’s campaign is all but over after five games in the 2023 ICC World Cup. Owing to Shakib’s superlative performance, Bangladesh’s batting was one of the biggest takeaways of the 2019 World Cup. With their seniors opting for a batting approach from the Stone Age and a lack of spark in the first-timers, this edition seems one step forward and two steps back for the Tigers.
