The Tigers In Their First Ever Series Win Against The Kiwis
Shakib Al Hasan of Bangladesh is now a one man demolition team in international cricket. In his first press conference in Dhaka, the Kiwis Skipper Daniel Vettori said that he was afraid of Shakib as he thinks that he could be the difference between the two teams, and on the 4th One-day match between the two teams his words came true.
It was a disastrous start for Bangladesh when Vettori had won the toss and asked them to bat first at Shere Bangla National Stadium, Mirpur. Shahriar Nafees, the hero of Bangladesh in the first two matches got out to Kyle Mills without scoring; Bangladesh was 1 for 1. It was far from the ideal start they had in the previous match when the opening pair created a new national record of 127 runs against the Kiwis.
To make matters worse, the Tigers lost their next wicket at 27, and kept on losing wickets regularly until Shakib came to bat. While Bangladesh was steadily losing wickets from one end, Shakib stood guard like a rock at the other end. With Imrul Kayes and Mahmudullah in company Shakib got two reasonable partnerships, and when he got out after scoring 106, the score looked respectable at 216 for 6. Although the team did not last long after his departure, by the end they had a tally of 241, which was a decent score given the nature of the wicket.
New Zealand did not fare well either when their turn for batting came up. BJ Watling was leg before the wicket for 6 on the bowling of Abdur Razzak, and Brendon McCullum was caught and bowled by Shafiul Islam after scoring 21. Ross Taylor, the most successful of New Zealand's batsmen then picked out the deep square-leg fielder making it 35 for three.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati