Why Did Khulna Tigers End In A Disappointing Manner Despite A Brilliant Start?  

Comilla Victorians, Rangpur Riders – Which is the third best team in this year’s BPL? Before the start of the tournament, a cricketer of Khulna Tigers took the name of his team very proudly. Then, while arguing, he took the names of Afif Hossain, Enamul Haque, Parvez Hossain, Nasum Ahmed and Mahmudul Hasan while he reminded of Evin Lewis, Fahim Ashraf, Dasun Shanaka, Shai Hope, and Mohammad Wasim trying to explain that foreign players are not bad either.

But the game is not played on paper. The combination of local and foreign cricketers in Khulna was good in the last season of BPL as well. But the team finished the tournament from 5th in the points table with only 3 wins in 12 matches. Despite winning two matches more than last time, this time Khulna is in fifth place in the points list but that too despite having a great start to the tournament as they started this year’s BPL by winning their opening four matches in a row. But since then Khulna has won only 1 in 7 matches! 

Why did Khulna end this despite such a great start?

Kriknews tries to analyse it.

Failure of local cricketers

Afif Hossain’s name will come first in this case. This cricketer could not reciprocate Khulna’s trust despite scoring fifty in their last game. 

Among the top 10 run-scorers in this year’s BPL, the only representative captain of Khulna is Anamul but if any of Mahmudul Hasan or Parvez Hossain could have contributed even that much, maybe Khulna would not have lost so many matches.

“If we can’t do the result then it goes in the opposite direction. We certainly had responsibilities that we could keep. It is true that we have not done justice to our name. That’s why the result was not in our favour,” Anamul said.

Middle order batting

Khulna got more or less runs from the top order in this year’s BPL. Sometimes Evin Lewis, sometimes Anamul gave the team an explosive start but Khulna’s middle order batsman could not settle the match in the middle overs. Anamul also cited the lack of a big pair in the middle order as one of the reasons for their failure, ‘We lost quite a few matches in the middle. We should have won some of the matches we lost in a row. In this case, our batting in the middle overs was not good. It was happening a bit in the top order, but not in the middle overs. If we could have batted better at times in those matches, the picture of the game could have been different.’

Lack of wicket takers

Batsmen win matches, bowlers win tournaments. There is such a thing in cricket. Khulna’s batsmen failed to live up to expectations, and the bowlers were a complete failure. The top 10 wicket takers in the tournament are far away, the top 20 – none of Khulna’s bowlers are among them. Khulna’s Pakistani pacer Faheem Ashraf, who last played in the BPL on February 7, is in 21st place with 8 wickets. Young pacer Mukidul Islam took 8 wickets in 9 matches, giving 9.03 runs per over. Nasum Ahmed also could not give his best. He took only 8 wickets in 10 matches.

Can be one of the best 4 teams in BPL with such bowling! Khulna’s death bowling disappointed team captain Anamul the most, ‘The main things we talk about in terms of bowling, execution, death over bowling, yorkers… we had flaws in these areas as well. We had a chance to do well here. We have suffered a lot in this regard. Of course death bowling was a problem.’

Lack of foreign options

Wasim Junior, Mohammad Newaz, Dasoon Shanaka, Fahim Ashraf basically did not do well after Khulna left BPL. The batting order was tall, with a bevy of all-rounders, and the substitute bowlers were plentiful. But Khulna lost three Pakistani all-rounders as they played in the Pakistan Super League (PSL). Khulna could not turn around from there. Those who came as alternative foreigners could not fill that void.

Opener Evin Lewis was a regular among the foreigners while Wayne Parnell, Jason Holder, Shai Hope could not do anything to win the team. However, when many foreigners came, Khulna fell behind. They didn’t even get enough time to make a difference.