Mominul rues not being able to contribute more

Bangladesh No 3 batsman and first innings centurion Mominul Haque said he is happy with his knock but informed that he should have played on, at least for one more session, in order to take the Tigers to a better position in the first Test match against Sri Lanka. Mominul added just one run to his overnight 175 before losing his wicket in the third over of the day, against Lankan spinner Rangana Herath. “I am quite happy with what I have done but I think I should have contributed a bit more for the team. In the end it’s a team game. It would be wrong to say I am not satisfied with the effort. I should have probably played a bit longer, perhaps another session. I think my dismissal caused the problem. When you are 170-odd not out, everyone would expect you to bat a couple of sessions more. If I had batted longer, we’d have crossed 600,” said Mominul during the post-day press conference at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Cricket Stadium in the port city Thursday.

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The last two years did not go all that well for Mominul. The left-hander scored 384 runs in 16 innings at an average of 24. Mominul scored three half-centuries in these two years and was not able to score big, which he usually did in the beginning of his career. “I wasn’t thinking about the past. I was getting out in the 60s, 70s or 80s so I challenged myself to get a big score. The teammates supported me a lot, and when I was going through a hard time I got the support of the whole country,” said Mominul. “I think previously I used to bat for myself, when I got to 70s or 80s. Now that’s over. I am now focused on session by session, so that I can get a bigger score.

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“There’s no specific reason for celebrating with such ecstasy. It was my own challenge to score big. I haven’t been scoring a hundred for a long time, so I was happy to reach the milestone,” he added. Recently, Mominul worked on the technical aspects of his batting with local coach Mohammad Salahuddin, considered one of the best coaches around. Salahuddin is also a mentor to Mominul. Mominul said the work paid off in some style as he scored two centuries in the Bangladesh Cricket League before his Chittagong knock. “I didn’t work on anything technical. He just told me to do certain things. I just worked on the mental side of the game and it worked,” he concluded.