Losing wickets mid-innings generated many dot balls against New Zealand, says Shanto

New Zealand forced Bangladesh into many dot balls by making regular inroads in the middle overs of the Bangladesh innings, skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto says after the Tigers’ exit from the Champions Trophy.

Bangladesh batters played out 181 dot balls, which is more than 30 overs in a 50-over innings, and managed to score 236 runs during their efforts to stay alive in the ICC tournament in Rawalpindi on Monday.

They lost three wickets between overs 21-27 when Towhid Hridoy, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah gifted away their wickets in reckless abandon.

Bangladesh also failed to score off 159 deliveries against India in their opener in Dubai.

This is but one of the issues that has plagued Bangladesh’s batting performances. The Tigers have recently failed to convert starts, read match situations, judge balls, or lost their nerve after setting up late fireworks.

But the stalling scoring rate intermittently across an innings has been a prime reason why Bangladesh regularly fail to score totals in excess of 300 in ODIs.

“We definitely have room for improvement here. Look, we don’t regularly score 300, that’s true. We have to accept that. If you want to talk about the dot balls today, we lost a wicket every 5 or 10 overs,” Shanto later said.

Bangladesh failed to stitch even a half-century partnership together on Monday.

“Batters find it very hard to rotate the strike in that position. One big partnership, or two, would’ve prevented that [so many dot balls].”

“It’s important we regularly score 300. We seldom make 300. To get out of this, [the coach] tells us during training about how to play regularly on good wickets and how to get good scores against big teams - that’s important,” he added.

“But the reason for so many dot balls today is we lost wickets regularly.”