Bangladesh break Jinx, get half-a-dozen scalps

Ajinkya Rahane was unfortunate to miss out on his fourth Test ton by just 2 runs. But his aggressive batting at No.5 helped India recover from a middle-order hiccup and finish yet another rain-curtailed day on 462/6. Three days into the Fatullah match, only 103.3 overs have been bowled in total. (Source: AP)

Written by Daksh Panwar | Fatullah | Updated: June 13, 2015 12:42 am

After staying behind a thick cloud cover for two days, the sun came out on Friday morning. Simultaneously, Bangladesh came out of their shell too.

Over the course of the first two days, the Test match had seen four sessions and a bit washed out by rain. The start of Day Three’s play, therefore, was pushed 30 minutes ahead of the schedule to make up for some of the lost time. It meant you needed to get up early to catch the first ball.

Surprisingly, however, there was little traffic on the road. Twenty kilometres just flew by. As you subsequently find out, in Bangladesh, Friday and Saturday are your weekly off days. It was evident in the number of people who had showed up at the stadium. It was rather impressive. There were long queues of fans wearing green floppy hats and the peculiar conical ones, almost all of them clad in the Bangladesh’s ODI jersey.

The onus was now on their team to show up with the ball. And show up they did. To be fair, though, any persuasion they needed was provided by India’s intent. To borrow a phrase from Bill Woodfull and tweak it to explain where the match stood at the start of the day: Of the two teams playing out there, one was playing to win, the other to stay competitive.”

Virat Kohli, it appeared, wanted his batsmen to score quickly and take the total from 239/0 to past 500 before contemplating a declaration — something you could make out from the morning warm-up session where India’s bowlers put in a lot more hard work than the batsmen.

However, intent is one thing and execution is another. The home team would not roll over and play dead. They had copped enough flak from the local media and fans on Day One for their defensive mindset. They introspected, Shakib Al Hasan later revealed, and concluded that they were giving away too many freebies.

“We wanted to bowl well, in the right areas. So that if India wanted runs, they would have to come and earn them,” Shakib said.

In the first half and hour, Bangladesh’s bowlers didn’t give away any free boundaries, putting pressure on the naturally aggressive Shikhar Dhawan, who had made a fluent 150 on the first day. India’s first boundary, in fact, came in the eighth over of the day when Dhawan flicked Taijul Islam to fine leg. Two ball later, Murali Vijay cut one past point to raise his sixth Test ton.