Siraj and Kuldeep knock the stuffing out of Bangladesh’s batting lineup

The speedster rocked the hosts’ top-order with his fiery bowling before the spinner left batters bamboozled

On the eve of the first Test against India, Bangladesh head coach Russell Domingo had wanted his side to be competitive across the full length of the Test. But little would he have expected that he would be left a disappointed man after just two days of play.

At the end of proceedings on Thursday at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium here, the home side, after first letting the Indian lower order add a handsome 126 runs to the overnight score to finally finish on 404, abjectly surrendered with the bat, reduced to 133 for eight, a humongous 271 runs in the red.

On a wicket that appeared to have eased up for batting, especially against the softer ball, Bangladesh displayed very little patience and dragged itself into the pits from where a climb back looks a gargantuan task.

After Mohammed Siraj, with a little help from Umesh Yadav, destroyed the Bangladesh top-order across two spells totalling nine overs (9-1-14-3), Kuldeep Yadav, playing his first Test in 22 months, gave the ball an almighty rip to leave the next set of batters bamboozled (10-3-33-4).

Siraj, in fact, struck with the very first ball of the innings, having Najmul Hossain caught behind by Rishabh Pant. Umesh, with his skiddy pace, forced Yasir Ali to chop one onto his stumps.

If Umesh is all swish, Siraj is full of macho aggression, and he sings, often in the ear, as Litton Das found out. In his 29-ball stay until then, Litton had played a neat cameo, scoring 24 runs with five fours, including three on the bounce off Umesh.

Siraj let out a few words, later revealed by the pacer himself to be an innocuous line that went “this is not T20 cricket, play sensibly.” The very next ball, Litton didn’t go fully down for a delivery that scooted off the surface and turned back to see the stumps rearranged.