Is Slow Batting At The Top Hurting Fortune Barisal? 

The question was first raised by Mehedy Hasan at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium during the match between Fortune Barisal and Chattogram Challengers after their loss when he pointed fingers on their top-order as the all-rounder felt the slow batting of Tamim Iqbal and Mushfiqur Rahim was the reason behind their defeat.

On Tuesday Challengers earned another win against Fortune when the two sides made for the second time at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium and the reason remained the same- slow batting of the top-order. Challengers made 145-5 and when there were doubts raising whether this run will be enough at home of cricket it was brushed away by the bowling of Al Amin Hossain and Shohidul Islam through their disciplined bowling coupled by slow batting of Tamim as the Fortune could not make a comeback after losing three early wickets as they managed to put 129-8 to earn a 16-run loss that helped Challengers to reach the second position in the points table. 

Tamim scored his highest run in the ongoing BPL,49 from 46 balls that includes four boundaries and two sixes with a strike-rate of 106. In a T20 game one of the top-order is expected to play a big innings while the finishers will blaze coming down in the batting order and that is the batting template teams follows in the shortest format though it is not the case for Fortune so what is happening with them? 

“What happened even our captain said that they could not play their natural game here,” Fortune head coach Mizanur Rahman told reporters after the game at SBNS on Tuesday.

“We were seeing from outside there was extra bounce and probably that is the reason they could not play their natural shots,” he said.

“Initially we felt that this run can be chased easily but after sometime it appeared that batsmen are struggling to score not on the pacers but the spinners also got some bounce and it did not come as per expectation though I wont say it was a bad wicket but there was some extra bounce and we probably took a bit more time to adapt and we might have failed to understand it ,” he added.

There were questions whether Tamim” innings cost them the game though Mizanur begs to differ as he insisted that till Tamim was there were they were very much on the game.

“ He(Tamim) got out against Shohidul  and probably tried to take a chance but as he was the set batsman he need to take the responsibility and he took it too but the bat went out if his bat and he could not connect,” he said.

I wont say we could not score the runs due to our start but we probably did not bat with such strike rate but us MIrpur and other places and that happened for us,” he said.

In the wicket Tamim played at a strike rate of 106 in the same strip his team mate Mohammad Saifuddin scored 30 from 18 balls though his innings of 166 strike rate could not win the game for his team though it reduced the margin of the game.

Saifuddin played his first game in the tournament after battling out with back injury that prevented him from playing the last editions of BPL while if someone wants to find out the pace bowling all-rounder in that case it was in May 2023 in the Dhaka Premier League while he played his last international match in October 2022 against New Zealand. The question that strikes everyone’s mind is that if Saifuddin can do it why it could not be done by some of Tamim’s stature, known to be one of the greatest opener this country have ever produced.

“When Saifuddin went to bat we needed to score 18 to 20 runs and we didn’t have any other option and he will play that way (aggressively) and he could connect three to four balls and Saifuddin play in the lower order like that and you can see how it( wicket) behaved initially,” said Fortune’s head coach.

In this BPL Tamim played seven games and scored 198 runs fro 175 balls with a strike rate of 119,4 and an average of 28.3 that included 20 fours and six over boundaries while his dot ball percentage is 42.3 and if he wants to change the statistics he need to do some thing special and that too on immediate basis.

Tamim’s team Fortune played seven matches so far and currently at fifth place of points table with six points and a place in the playoffs depends on how they perform in the coming days considering the four teams above them in type points table looks to be contender for a place beyond the groups stage and now it remains to be seen whether Tamim and others can change the scenario by changing their batting gear.