Junaid must get his head down

It’s been more then a year ago that Junaid plyed against England at home, in February 2010. He scored a duck. Since then, Junaid has played 19 ODIs, and has been dismissed in single figures only twice. Even those two instances have occurred only recently, after an unbroken run of double figures in 14 games. That’s a record any No. 3 in the world would trade, but then again this coin has the other side too. Twelve of those promising starts have ended for scores less than 40, which is Junaid’s average for the same period is 35.

He has become more free flowing, but that seems to have cost him his wicket too often. And in a side that has shown it needs somebody to put a heavy price on his wicket, someone who puts his head down and faces the heat, Junaid’s recent adventures haven’t quite helped. He said he does not want to get out in the next match and this is what he is practicing in the net.

His last sentence is important. Bangladesh nets sessions are usually a place where the batsmen don’t spend a lot of time defending or fine-tuning defensive shots. Perhaps it is just because this is one-day cricket, perhaps the recent defeat makes it more conspicuous, but the Bangladesh nets sessions seem to feature much more merry hitting than other teams’. Over the last two or three days, though, Junaid and Mushfiqur Rahim have been more focused on playing the correct shots first before the adventurous one.