Durdanto Got a Reality Check 

There are different ways to play T20 cricket. There are some teams who depend on batting like England in international cricket and Royal Challengers Bangalore in Indian Premier League. Some teams’ batting is completely based on four-sixes and the West Indian team led by Darren Sammy seemed to fit in that category if not anything else. But there are teams that are opposite as well like Pakistan as they opted to have bowling dependent team from the very beginning and they were successful too and T20 teams that are playing the game on the back of bowling strength have different philosophy.

There are some teams that are very spin dependent. At one point in the IPL, Sunrisers Hyderabad was quite dependent on spin while the name of Chennai Super Kings will also come in this case. There are some T20 teams try to take the game deep, a template India followed in the past. There are some teams like Australia and New Zealand they prefer to play the game by mixing aggression with caution.

In the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League, Durdanto Dhaka can claim them to be a bowling dependent team. Taskin Ahmed and Shoriful Islam are the main strength of their bowling and no team to have two national pacers in their team to feature for them in the tournament, known to be the lone franchise-based T20 tournament of the country.

Taskin is the highest T20 wicket taker for Bangladesh in 2023 as he picked up 16 wickets in 8 matches while Shoriful is in the best form of his career. The left-arm pace bowler took 53 wickets in three editions in 2023.

Shoriful was instrumental in defeating New Zealand at own backyard as he grabbed 12 wickets in the white-ball series comprised with three T20 and as many ODIs that also helped him to be the highest wicket-taker of the series.

The in-form Shoriful is naturally the major strength of Dhaka’s bowling and especially with the new ball and he is taking wickets regularly with the angle deliveries coming into the batsman.

Bowling is strength – this could be the slogan of great Durdanto, courtesy of these two international pacers and what does a team need if there are two pace bowlers of their stature and if their eight overs can be utilized well coupled by the left-arm spin of Arafat Sunny and Chaturanga de Silva along with leg spin of Usman Qadir in that case the team from then capital city certainly have all their base cover as far as their bowling is concerned.

Thanks to this bowling power, Dhaka defeated last year’s champion Comilla Victorians in the opening match. Dhaka stopped Comilla for 144 runs in that match. Later, Mohammad Naeem Sheikh’s fifty took the team to the top. But they had to bat first against Chittagong Challengers in their second game and they could just put up 136 runs for 8 wickets due to batting failure. Shoriful took two wickets in the first spell but certainly it was not good enough as they lost the game by four wickets.

Durdanto failed to put enough runs on the scoreboard and that was the main reason for their loss and it simply suggest that to survive in the competition Durdanto will have to score over 160 runs on consistent basis. Let’s face it Durdanto is not a two hundred run team and they don’t even have that power as of now with the present batting line-up but they have the ability to consistently score moderate runs. There is an opportunity to use it in the remaining matches of the league stage. In this case the responsibility of Mohammad Naeem Sheikh is important. The left-handed opener played a direct role in the victory against Comilla by scoring 52 runs in the first match. Naeem made a partnership of 100 runs with Danushka Gunathilaka of Sri Lanka in the first match.

Unfortunately, Gunathilaka suffered a head injury while scooping in the match against Chattogram that forced Durdanto to have a concussion replacement. There is concern about whether he will be able to play in the next match. Although team captain Mosaddek Hossain is hopeful of getting him back in the next match.

“His (Gunathilaka) update is good now, back is back on the field. His stitches are like 20-22. Now I see that he is good, he is talking, hopefully he will be available from the next match,” said Durdanto skipper.

Siam Ayub, another foreigner for Durdanto is expected to join the team within two days and this young Pakistani batsman might add a different dimension to Dhaka’s batting. Dhaka may be waiting for him. 

“We won the first match and we lost today and so I feel we need to settle down couple of things and it will be fine,” said Mossadek.

Fortunately, the real picture of Durdanto strength and weakness was exposed in the second match of the league stage and there is still room and time to fix those gaps in the batting order and if they can do that in that case they might surprise many teams with their bowling strength.