Bangladesh is firmly in control of the first Test against Pakistan at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium following rain-interrupted fourth day as the hosts took a lead of 179 runs with seven wickets remaining with, captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and Mushfiqur Rahim batting respectively on 58 and 16 runs.
With his team on the backfoot, Salman Agha, the Pakistan batter, threw a bait at the opposition. "Right now you can't say who has the upper hand in this game. And Tomorrow will be an exciting day of Test cricket. We just want to get them out as quickly as we can. That's what our strategy is going to be. I don't know about the rest," said Salman.
"Definitely, we will go for the win," he said, before adding, "If they are brave enough to do that - give us 70 overs and 260 - we will definitely go for the chase. But I don't think they will do that.
"For that, they have to score 100-odd in 20 overs. If they want to do that, that's brilliant. But it's going to be very risky. Personally, I want them to do that. I want them to give us like 60-70 overs and a score of 260 to chase. But somehow, I think they won't.
"If they give us two sessions and something like 250-odd, we will definitely go for the chase first, and then we'll see how the pitch is playing. But as of now, we want to win this game."
However, Salman added that such an approach could be risky for Bangladesh.
"Not saying they are not brave enough, but I'm just saying for them the best thing is to just take us out of the game. But if they do that, like 70 overs and give us 260 to 270 to chase, then we will be in the game as well," he said.
"If we (Pakistan) were in this position we would have tried to do that (post a big total) and we just make sure to take them out of the game, and then give them whatever target we want to give them," he said.'
Salman added that introduction of the World Test Championship and the point-based system are encouraging teams to prepare result oriented wickets.
"Since that format has changed and the World Test Championship has been introduced, the teams do want to win games as many as they can. Because of that, the kind of pitches teams are preparing, even us in Pakistan, are preparing wickets for the results.
"If you go 10 or 15 years back, you will see the pitches were very flat and then the draws came in those days. But now if you see, there are not many draws anymore. You will see the results of most of the games. So that's what teams are doing. And then when you have pitches where there is everything for the bowlers and even for the batters, then it's going to be challenging or it's going to be tough to get a draw. So it will always be result-oriented games," he added.
