Bangladesh national team were troubled with their opening partnership in their recent matches but on Friday, things turned around for them as Tanzid Hasan Tamim and Soumya Sarkar produced a 101-run opening stand in their fourth Twenty20 International against Zimbabwe at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
However, while their opening problem seemed finally over, their middle and lower order suffered a complete capitulation, seeing them bowled out for 143 from 101-0.
As it seems, the problems for Bangladesh are like the mythological character Hydra as solving one does not make the list shorter, rather it sees another problem rise up.
Hydra – a many-headed Greek mythological character – had one immortal head and the ability to respawn the remaining ones, meaning if someone cut one of those heads, it would just grow back.
Bangladesh’s perennial issue seems to be that they do not know how to match the levels of modern T20 cricket, alongside which they have several other underlying ones, one of which in recent days was their opening partnership.
Liton Das had been struggling with the bat, failing to score quickly and consistently, leading to him being dropped from the fourth game, and in his absence, Tanzid and Soumya added 101 runs for the opening partnership, which gave Bangladesh the base to finally score big in this series.
That, though, was not to be.
What followed was a capitulation of gargantuan proportions as they lost 10 wickets for just 42 runs, with nobody beyond the top three managing to hit double figures.
Towhid Hridoy, who scored 12, hit a leg-sided delivery from Sikandar Raza straight to deep backward square leg, and then both Shakib Al Hasan and Shakib Al Hasan were flummoxed by the off-spin of Brian Bennett to get bowled.
With Mahmudullah not in the XI, the onus was on either Shakib or Shanto to prevent such collapses but both were dismissed in the same over to ensure that they started it.
Jaker Ali Anik and Rishad Hossain could not make use of the chance to showcase their hitting ability despite getting ample time to do so as the former fell trying to slog, and the latter chopped it onto his stumps.
While Soumya and Tanzid’s partnership made sure that Bangladesh finally had a foundation, the middle-order soiled it, and with only four matches to go to the World Cup, the situation puts Bangladesh in an extremely difficult position.
They still don’t know what their opening combination will be as it’s still unsure whether they will keep Liton to ensure a left-right combination at the top, and if the middle-order issues rise again like on Friday, they will have problems running throughout their batting order, and that is definitely not a batting lineup the Tigers would want to take to the World Cup.
