Zimbabwe get soundly beaten

Bangladesh beat Zimbabwe. This is good. Ordinarily Bangladesh would have been in the post title, but we're expanding our vocabulary by using Zimbabwe as the subject for any number of 'get beaten' synonyms.

In fact we've not really got much to add to that. Our man Saqibul Hasan took 3-18 off ten overs in bowling Zimbabwe out for 130 in response to Bangladesh's 231. Shariar Nafees hit 123.

Saqibul Hasan is in Bangladesh's World Cup squad

Saqibul Hasan was always going to be in Bangladesh's World Cup squad, but we're guessing that most of you don't pay as much attention to Bangladesh's one-day line-up as we do.

All we're really doing is restating our belief that Saqibul Hasan is going to be 'Someone'. He may not be Someone at this World Cup. He'll be someone - he'll be Saqibul Hasan. We're just not sure he'll be 'Someone'.

He's still only 19, so we might have to be patient. On the other hand, great players do great things on the grandest of stages, so maybe we shouldn't be patient.

At the time of writing, Saqibul averages 40 with the bat in one-day internationals and 26 with the ball. He's only played 18 matches and the vast majority were against Zimbabwe, so you can probably ignore those figures.

Far better to admire his textbook batting in the accompanying minuscule and blurry photo. Some people might say that he looks overcoached on this evidence, but they'd be wrong. You can't teach a batting stance like that. It's innate.

We're uncertain whether that's a lone, disapproving spectator in the background, or the door to the gents.

Shakib al Hasan dropped

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that we're spelling our guy's name differently. That's because it changed on Cricinfo and we consider Cricinfo to be as close to a cricketing names dictionary as there is.

On the other hand, dictionaries don't tend to change their mind about spellings every once in a while. Consistency of spelling is something of a hallmark of the dictionary. Maybe we should look elsewhere.

However you spell it, Shakib al Hasan has been dropped from the Bangladesh team. As Miriam pointed out in her match report, he top-scored in the first Test against Sri Lanka, albeit with a less-than-modest 16.

Well how Bangladesh will be pining for his double-figure-scoring ability now. They've just been bowled out for 62 - a score that begs to be classed as paltry, but is actually slightly too low for that label.

Lasith Malinga took 4-25 and His Geniusness, Lord Muttiahford of Muralitharanshire took 4-14.

Saqibul Hasan puts India to the sword

Actually, India won. Saqibul Hasan put in his usual barely-noticeable, steady-yet-effective performance. He hit 50 and then took 2-43.

The end.

We've got a good post for tomorrow. We promise.

Saqibul Hasan top-scores against England

Check it out - it's an actual picture of Saqibul Hasan where you can see his face and everything. He looks like the kind of person who beats us at Scrabble and makes us knock the board over. Curse you Q without a U or a blank. Curse you!

We kind of feel like we don't have to mould unfriendly facts to fit our own skewed world view today. Nobody scored runs for England against Bangladesh. Nobody scored runs for Bangladesh against England. Except Saqibul Hasan!

57 not out was comfortably - COMFORTABLY - the best innings of the match and that makes Saqibul the best player of the match. There was no other cricket going on yesterday, so yesterday he was the best batsman in the world.

Let's celebrate by putting 'Saqibul' on a triple word score, even though it's a proper noun. Let's see: That's 18 points times three, plus 50 for using all your letters - that's at least 104 points and you'll get even more for the word you've tacked an S onto the end of. That's better than 'Tait' wherever you put it.

Saqibul Hasan's shovel shot

We're the only people interested in Saqibul Hasan, so we get to name his shots. There was an unexpected boon yesterday when it turned out that Saqibul Hasan's actually got a shot worth naming. We're calling it 'the shovel'.

In between much whinging about non-competitive matches in the World Cup and general Bangladeshi belittlement - although the team did little to counteract this - the Test Match Special commentators were momentarily taken aback by a shot played by Saqibul Hasan.

It seems that our boy changes his grip and stance as the ball is being delivered and then spoons it backwards in a 'chuck soil behind you' manoevre.

We think we might have spotted an instance of 'the shovel' even before yesterday. We've previously featured a photo of Saqibul Hasan and described his textbook stance. That photo bears an uncanny resemblance to 'the shovel' above. In fact, here's the picture.

We told you the lad was an unparallelled genius. Now we've got some flimsy evidence to back that up. Pretty soon everyone will be doing the shovel.

Some other batsmen and their signature shots

Saqibul Hasan hits 50 against India

The man's some kind of genius. Ask anyone. Saqibul Hasan hit 53 against India.

Shortly afterwards we went into the middle of town, took off our shirt, stood on a pedestal and screamed: "See! See! See how Saqibul Hasan's a genius! See how his 53, comfortably the third-highest score of the match, confirms his status as one of the future greats!"

An indifferent Manchester mostly ignored us.

We tipped Saqibul Hasan as a future something-or-other, by the way. He's also one of our World Cup players to watch.

Saqibul Hasan, Bangladesh - World Cup player to watch

Saqibul Hasan's one of our tips for the future, so again, we HAVE to pick him. We reckon that it could be a bit soon for him to shine at the top level, but then again, what's the point in identifying someone as a future great if you have to wait until they're 30.

Keep your eyes on Saqibul Hasan. Even if he doesn't set the World Cup alight (not literally - he's not Mark Vermeulen) he might show some signs of what's to come.

Other players to watch during the World Cup

Tip: Sakib al Hasan/Shakib al Hasan/Saqibul Hasan

Sakib Al Hasan is representing the Bangladesh under-19s at the moment. He's 16 (or 18 - it's never simple) and he's a left-handed, top order batsman and left arm spinner. He was out for 20 off 16 balls against Uganda under-19s this morning, so this isn't the most timely of tips, but he is good. Really good.

He got the top four Pakistan batsmen out in Bangladesh's first match of the Under-19 World Cup. He also took 3-39 and then scored 100 off 86 balls against Sri Lanka in the final of an under-19 tri-nation tournament before Christmas.

He's also helping the under-19s in their bid to field at least three Hasans in every match they play.

- As a footnote to this, we do now know what Sakib looks like because we found a picture on cricinfo. We were going to steal it, but the warnings about stealing it are a little bit too clear, so instead we're going to make do with pointing out that cricinfo think that he's a medium-fast bowler when he isn't.

Click here to laugh heartily at cricinfo and their poor research/airtight legal warnings about image theft.

King Cricket's other tips.