The tour opening Twenty20 may have set the pattern for rest of the limited overs leg of Pakistan’s Bangladesh visit. On thing is clear that spinners would rule the roost as both sides are packed with slow bowlers and have batting line-ups with the propensity of crumbling under pressure against quality bowling. However, Pakistan’s recent winning form has given them lot of confidence while as, Bangladesh players hardly finish on the winning side these days.
With everything going their way, Pakistan are enjoying an unprecedented run of success, not having lost a single bilateral series this year. The discipline and dedication inculcated by Misbah-ul-Haq is one of the main underlying reasons for Pakistan always have had the reputation of not utilizing their talent properly. But, it remains to be seen if Pakistan can carry on their winning streak into the next year.
On the other hand, Bangladesh need to improve their batting dramatically if they want to compete as equals on home soil. As of now, they seem to be clueless against the all-kinds-of-spin attack of their opponents. Shakib-Al-Hasan may not be the captain anymore but he remains their best man on the field. His poor show is bound to affect the team on the whole.
For Bangladesh, the capitulation in the T20 didn’t come as a surprise since they always have had the habit of following the outstanding with ordinary. Actually, form is a word not found in the dictionary used by Mushfiqur Rahim’s team. They can be pathetic one day and out of nowhere, produce scintillating performance the next day. In short, the hosts’ well known unpredictability is their only hope of getting past Pakistan in the ODI series.
Bangladesh Squad: Mushfiqur Rahim (c & wk), Mahmudullah (vc), Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes, Shakib Al Hasan, Alok Kapali, Naeem Islam, Nasir Hossain, Shafiul Islam, Abdur Razzak, Nazmul Hossain, Rubel Hossain, Elias Sunny, Farhad Reza, Shahriar Nafees.
Pakistan squad: Misbah-ul-Haq (c, Mohammad Hafeez, Imran Farhat, Shahid Afridi, Younis Khan, Umar Akmal, Shoaib Malik, Sarfraz Ahmed (wk), Saeed Ajmal, Abdul Rehman, Umar Gul, Aizaz Cheema, Junaid Khan, Sohail Tanvir, Abdul Razzaq, Asad Shafiq.
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