Cricket news - Joshi defends Mehidy Hasan after tough outing

Bangladesh spin bowling coach Sunil Joshi stressed Mehidy Hasan shouldn't be judged on his performance in the first Test against New Zealand. On Saturday (March 2), the offspinner recorded the sixth most expensive figures in Test cricket as he ended with 2 for 246 with the hosts scoring 715 for 6.

"When you bowl to the top order batsmen on a first-day pitch, you need to be very disciplined. As a finger spinner, you don't have much choice on the first-day pitch. So you need to bowl right areas, hitting good lengths and be consistent and give support to the first bowling options," Joshi said.

"Finger spinners from the sub-continent travel abroad, they have a challenge. Mehidy had an off day on the first day. We knew that he'd come back. I think he bowled well in patches. They batted really well. It is bound to happen. We need to change our mindset about playing Tests in this part of the world."

Jeet Raval and Tom Latham scored centuries while Kane Williamson dominated proceedings and scored a double century. Bangladesh's struggled continues as they were reduced to 174 for 4 at the end of the third day and are still trailing by 307.

Joshi admitted that the preparation wasn't ideal coming into the tour and that's reflected in the team's performance. "Adapting is key because you need to change your mindset," he pointed out. "If you look at the conditions and what we use at home, you need to have e good preparation. If you look at the preparation coming into this tour was ... all the national team players were playing in the BPL.

"I am not blaming that. But they did not have the ideal preparation. We are not complaining about that. Again depends on the individual. You look at Tamim, what Tamim did, he adapted to the conditions, right? It's again up the players, individual players how you take it, how you prepare yourself, how you change your mindset."