DHAKA, – Bangladesh fast bowling coach Ottis Gibson urged his pacers to come up with better line and length, which he thought missed on the day one of the second Test against New Zealand today at Hagley Oval in Christchurch. According to him, the err in length allowed New Zealand to milk runs freely as they reached a mammoth 349-1 at stumps, almost taking the game away from the visitors.
Skipper Tom Latham was batting on 186 with Devon Conway on 99 before the bails were drawn and indicating to pile more misery on Bangladesh. “We’ve to learn from today. We bowled too many four-balls today. Too many balls wide and outside the offstump. When we missed our lengths, we got cut or got too full to be driven,” Gibson said after the day’s game. “You can’t allow the batters to score down the ground and both sides of the wicket. One of my mantras is you can’t control the scoring if you don’t control the length. We didn’t control the length today to build pressure on them.”
But it was also a learning curve for the inexperienced bowling line up who saw a massive high in the last week, crushing New Zealand by eight wickets for their first Test victory against them and now experienced a low. For Bangladesh, Ebadot Hossain was the most experienced bowler with 12 matches and Taskin Ahmed is playing his ninth while Shoriful Islam is playing his only third Test.
“The guys have been going forward. Look at the inexperience of the bowling attack and see where they got to last week in terms of growth and learning, but again, today is a lesson for them,” he pointed out. Gibson, however, also stated that Bangladeshi bowlers were emotionally drained after the monumental victory in the first Test and it also could have an impact on their bowling. According to him after such a historical victory, this sort of thing could happen, because the players are after all human being.
“We saw the highs and lows of international sport today. Last week, we were on a high. We are, perhaps, still feeling the effects of last week’s emotional and physical investment. We didn’t hit our straps.” Having said that, Gibson also praised New Zealand’s effort to bounce back from the defeat that snapped their 17-match unbeaten run at home. “New Zealand would have been hurting from last week. They showed why they are one of the best teams in the world.
They applied themselves. They left a lot better. They showed us why they are holding the [WTC] mace at the moment,” he said. At the same time, Gibson pointed out at the wicket, saying that the green pitch at the Hagley Oval didn’t quite play up to its high reputation of helping the fast bowlers as Bangladesh put New Zealand into batting after winning the toss.
“I thought Latham played really well. He left a lot of good balls early this morning. He made us bowl to him. Unfortunately, we didn’t bowl enough good balls to create the sort of pressure we created last week. Conway is in unbelievable form. “The pitch didn’t do as much as we expected. But we didn’t bowl as well as we could have done either. When we bowled full, there wasn’t a lot of seam movement.”
