When would our cricket come of age?

In the post-mortem of our latest performance, different reasons are being ascribed to the poor score-card against England: too much cricket within a short span of time; 'the volume of losing matches bringing down player performance'; and too much of experimentation with team selection. True, by and large we have crossed the hurdles of playing into the fifth day of a test match and into the 50th over in the one dayer version. We have quickly taken the wickets of world class batsmen by bowling to their weaknesses and some of our batsmen have skillfully played the pace bowling of the likes of Bret Lee and Shoaib Akhter. Yet, when it comes to building an innings or chasing a 200-plus target, we invariably fail.

The English bowlers' strategy was to rout the Bangladeshi chances by bowling slightly short of length and with the advantage of their height they gave a bounce to the ball the Bangladeshis were hard-put to play. Their tactic worked. We should have had an answer for it.

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Nothing wins more than a win; defeat is an orphan, more so, when we are yet to shed the infancy trappings. We must secure a victory against a good team to raise the level of our self-esteem. Let's see how we fare against Zimbabwe, the next series around.