"It is unacceptable, you can't do that in international cricket," said the Lankan skipper while reacting to Shahadat's grunting.

A visibly disturbed Jayawardene even turned to the umpires to ask the paceman, who at times does it in domestic matches too, to stop grunting.

Shahadat indeed grunts while bowling, but it may not be as loud as Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova does. His teammates however thought that it was a ploy of the Sri Lankan captain to distract the right-armer, who bowled with aggression with the new ball. Shahadat took two wickets in his first two overs and had Mahala caught off a no-ball.

"I think Mahela reacted heavily because his side at that point was struggling at 14-2 and the aggressive fast bowler produced some fiery short balls at him," said a Bangladeshi player.

But on the day what was exceptional was the Bangladesh think-tank's idea about Shahadat's capability of handling champion off-spinner Muttiah Muralidaran better than Mashrafe Bin Mortaza.

Although everybody was guessing about the injury of Mashrafe, the team sources confirmed that they sent Shahadat ahead of Mashrafe because they thought he might have been successful against Muralidaran.