Rahim wants his batsmen to have a better sense of judgement in the future

Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim has admitted that his team’s poor shot selection directly resulted in their humiliating 2-0 thrashing at the hands of the West Indies.

Bangladesh’s shot selection has been heavily criticised in the past and Rahim was not afraid to bring up the subject again, stating that it was time for all the batsmen to concentrate more and have a better sense of judgement at the crease.

“We should play natural cricket depending on the situation,” Rahim said. “Chanderpaul also plays the lofted shot but when he does that, there is little risk. The team, including myself, have to learn from these things, when to play low-risk and high-risk shots. We have to understand that the team comes first, and not individuals.”

Despite scoring an outstanding 556 in the first innings of the first Test at Mirpur, Bangladesh barely up a fight in any of their other innings and Rahim noted that the team’s attitude to attack when under pressure has to change.

“All the wickets that fall in a Test match are not entirely down to the bowlers’ credit,” Rahim added. “Batsmen are at fault too. But in our case, the batsmen gift them the wickets regularly without the bowlers earning it, that’s the most terrible thing, we have to work on avoiding soft dismissals. We have been doing it for a long period during which many of us have scored runs as well. Sometimes situations are such that a single dismissal turns the game away from us. Questions are justifiably raised and we are concerned about it.”

However, it all starts with the captain, as the saying goes, and Rahim himself admitted that coming down the track and trying to loft spinners over the in-field was not a very common shot in his arsenal.

“I don’t even know [if] I’ve got out like that before,” Rahim revealed. “I don’t remember getting out to a nothing shot like that. It was my fault. I wanted to play a long innings and forge a partnership with Shakib [Al Hasan], but it didn’t happen.”

Rahim was extremely disappointed that his team had not shown the same passion and fight after their efforts to score 556 in the first Test.

“It is quite frustrating because we played well in the first Test,” Rahim said. “In the first innings here, Abul [Hasan] played outstandingly or we could have been out of the Test very early. He kept us in the game and we scored almost 400.

“We also missed some chances and it is important to hold on to them on such pitches, because it becomes difficult to get [batsmen] out. In the second innings, there wasn’t much help for the bowlers. As it happens most of the times, we played bad shots to get out. If that didn’t happen, you saw how Shakib and Nasir [Hossain] batted – there were no demons in the wicket.”

Bangladesh will now be looking to build on the positives from their series against the West Indies and use them to try and pull off an upset in their two-Test series against Sri Lanka in February.