There were hardly anyone expecting Bangladesh to pull off a miracle against the Sri Lankans in the two match Test series in Dhaka and Chittagong. But what Bangladeshi coach Jammie Siddons, who was once earmarked to replace Tom Moody as Sri Lanka coach, said at the start of the series, had a lot of sense. Siddons was of the view that his players’ priority should be taking Test Matches the full distance of five days rather than thinking of winning against stronger teams.

And how well the hosts responded to their coach’s wish. Not only did they take the opening Test the full distance, but also gave the Sri Lankans a scare or two as the game went on to the wire with Bangladesh eventually losing by 107 runs chasing a record 521 to win.

But as we have noted time and again, consistency has never been Bangladesh’s forte and they crashed to an embarrassing 465 run defeat in Chittagong brining all their efforts in Dhaka back to square one.

The efforts of Mohammad Ashraful (101) and Sakib Al Hasan (96) against Muttiah Muralitharan on a wearing track spoke volumes of the improvements the Bangladeshis had made. But yet, all that was spoilt in the second Test. The way the captain was dismissed in Chittagong reflected the Bangladeshis’ temperament in Test cricket. On one instance he fell trying to reverse sweep Murali while on the other he fell for a wide delivery by Ajantha Mendis that he could well have left alone.

Although the paceman impressed with early wickets on all four Sri Lankan innings, the most impressive of the hosts was Sakib Al Hasan, who was both the highest run scorer and highest wicket taker for Bangladesh.

While he scored 168 runs in four innings at 42:00, his 11 wickets in the series were the second highest behind Muralitharan, who claimed 13 wickets. The only other Bangladeshis to impress were wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim, who topped averages scoring over 130 runs at 45 and Mashrafe Mortaza, who finished with seven wickets at 33:85.

Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardene quite rightly pointed out that Bangladesh have improved over the years, but the improvement is still insufficient to challenge leading Test playing nations.

As for the Sri Lankans, Tillekeratne Dilshan had a remarkable series. With the axe falling on Chamara Silva, the message must have clearly gone to Dilshan that he needed to be consistent to remain in the side and the 32-year-old put up a splendid show in Chittagong to become only the fourth Sri Lankan to score twin hundreds in a Test after Duleep Mendis, Asanka Gurusinghe and Aravinda de Silva.

In the first innings, he walked in with the side in trouble at 75 for four and put the side in a strong position by hitting a run-a-ball 162 and followed that with another 143 in the second essay and deserved both the Man of the Match and Man of the Series awards that he won.

Muralitharan, meanwhile made his presence felt with yet another match-bag of ten wickets in the first Test, but managed to pick up just three in the second Test and went wicket less in the Bangladeshi second innings.