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Cape Town - Proteas bowling coach Charl Langeveldt is happy with the way the bowlers stuck to their plans on day two of the first Test against Bangladesh in Chittagong.
The bowlers toiled on an unresponsive pitch with little success, and will be eyeing the second new ball along with predicted overhead conditions to counter Bangladesh’s resolute batting.
“I’m very happy with them,” Langeveldt said at the end of the rain-affected last session on Wednesday.
“They are still world-class bowlers, he (Steyn) beat the bat quite a lot, especially with the new ball. It was one of those days, you could be bowling really well and get no wickets or rewards, then suddenly a bowler like Stiaan (Van Zyl) comes on and gets a leg-side stumping.
“Obviously for any bowling coach you will always want it a bit more but we’ll take that,” he said of exerting pressure.
“Tomorrow we could come back and take two quick wickets upfront. Their best batsman is in at the moment, Mahmudullah played well and so did Tamin (Iqbal). We could come here tomorrow, it could be overcast and the second new ball is due so it could be a different story come stumps tomorrow.”
The coach praised part-timers, Van Zyl and Dean Elgar, for their respectable work with the ball, but also gave due credit to the rest of the attack for building the pressure at the other end.
“Stiaan and Dean are part-timers so it is rewarding to see them get wickets,” he said.
“When they do get wickets it does help us but it’s the pressure from the four main bowlers that builds up so sometimes you get a part-timer coming on and he gets the wicket.”
The elements of nature could play a determining role on the result with rain forecast for the remainder of the match, however, rain aside and with three days to play, Langeveldt feels the pendulum could still swing in favour of either team.
“At the moment I would probably go 60/40 in their favour,” he said in assessment of how the match is poised.
“They are on 180 batting at 2.5 to the over so the game is fairly even. If they go past our score to maybe a 100-run lead we would be struggling but I think at the moment it’s fairly even.”
Play will start at 05:30 on Thursday with the rest of the overs lost today to be made up during the middle session.
