SYLHET: Bangladesh coach Steve Rhodes on Wednesday promised his team would bounce back from their opening Test defeat against Zimbabwe to square the two-Test series in Dhaka.

Zimbabwe thrashed Bangladesh by 151 runs in the first Test in the northeastern city of Sylhet, posting their first Test win in five years since they defeated Pakistan at Harare in 2013.

Bangladesh were heavily criticised for their poor show in the game, in which the team was dismissed for 143 and 169 runs in two innings — making eight consecutive Test innings where Bangladesh failed to cross the 200-run mark.

But Rhodes said he is hoping the team will make a strong comeback in the next match.

“These guys are really determined to put things right and that’s what I love about the Bangladeshi dressing room. They keep surprising me and they keep bouncing back,” Rhodes told reporters in Sylhet. “Certainly the only thing that went wrong in this game was our batting in the first innings. We lost the toss when there was not much happening and we did a great job in bowling them out for 282.

“Then we needed 350 or 400 and if we didn’t get that score then it was always going to be difficult batting last.

“So we missed an opportunity in our first innings batting and there was nothing wrong with our plans or tactics, we just made a mess of it in our first innings.

“To get rolled for 140 [143] and be a 140 [139] behind, going into the third innings of the game, was quite disastrous for us.”

He said the team would put things right in the second and last Test match at Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium beginning on Sunday.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2018