Mominul concedes Bangladesh 'have to improve a lot' after another spin capitulation

Bangladesh's captain Mominul Haque has admitted that his team has been out of sorts ever since the first innings of the Durban Test, which the visitors lost by 220 runs. Bangladesh's poor form with the bat continued into the second Test as well, as they were bowled out for 80 in the fourth innings in Gqeberha, their second sub-100 score in the series. For the second straight game, Bangladesh capitulated against spin, losing all 10 of their wickets to Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer.

"There's only one explanation: we batted poorly," Mominul said. "We couldn't play team-wise. After batting well in the first innings in Durban, we couldn't repeat it again in the Test series. Batting by session, batting for time, these things went missing. You have to play well in every session. We have to improve a lot. We are not the No. 1 team in the world. But we are still at the same place before the (Mt Maunganui) win."

Mominul claimed that Bangladesh don't play spin well, even though it is quite well known that the players are born and bred in spinning tracks. The only difference between the pitches in Bangladesh and those in South Africa during this series was the bounce.

"Everyone knows we don't play spin well, except one or two of us. We have to improve our square-of-the-wicket shots. (Yasir Ali) Rabbi and I shouldn't have tried to play those shots over the top. It would have been better had we tried to play it square of the wicket. The better option was to play it along the ground.

"There is a fundamental difference between wickets here and the sub-continent. In our conditions, one can use sidespin. Here, it doesn't really work. Here, overspin is useful. Our bowlers are more used to sidespin. One has to go through a lot of technical changes for overspin. There's also the difference between domestic and international level."

Mominul said that Bangladesh couldn't afford to play with five bowlers, mainly because they usually want to have seven batters in their line-up at all times.

"Do we ever play with five bowlers? It is tough for us to play five bowlers. Our batting gets weakened. We are a lower-ranked team. We are not the No. 1 team in the world. When we can be a No. 4 or 5 ranked team, we can play with five bowlers. I think this is logical."