Dropping Mominul shifted the momentum: Makunura
Photo - BCB
|| CF Correspondent ||
Despite leaving Bangladesh at precarious 26-3, Zimbabwe let the hosts declare on 522-7—a thing that left the visitors scratching their hair with utter frustration. The frustration is agonizingly painful, considering this was Bangladesh’s highest total against the Southern African nation.
It also left them pondering what went wrong actually. They understood the record 266-run partnership between Mushfiqur Rahim and Mominul Haque from 26-3, actually batted them out from the game. But there was opportunity for them to hit back specially when Mominul offered a catch when on 9. He survived to punish Zimbabwe for not holding on to the catch.
Zimbabwe fielding coach Shepherd Makunura termed it frustrating but insisted his side to move on from there.
“It’s always frustrating, but it’s part of the game. You catch some, you drop some, and it’s part of the game. We have to take it in our stride, and move on from there,” he said.
“That’s part of cricket. Things like that will always happen. In cricket you do get a few wickets early on, but in Test cricket there’s bound to be partnerships along the way. The way the Bangladesh batters applied themselves, they set themselves up for the other batters coming in.”
Zimbabwe bowlers however just couldn’t replicate the spirited performance that they showed in Sylhet in the first Test. Makunura ruled out of any complacency factor behind that.
“I don’t think the guys were complacent. We spoke in our change rooms earlier on that it was an opportunity for us to win an away Test series, which we haven’t done in a long time. I don’t think we bowled well enough, but I wouldn’t put that down to complacency. We didn’t bowl as well as we should have, but we also must give credit to the Bangladesh batters.”
