MOMENTS
ONE BALL, TWO REPRIEVES, BUT STILL NOT ENOUGH
Recalled opener Anamul Haque has been given the license to go hell for leather to get Bangladesh off to flying starts while their best batsman, Tamim Iqbal, can settle in and score big. It is a ploy that seems to be working for now, but it does make for some chaotic batting. Having reached 34 off 35 balls in the 15th over while Tamim was on a sedate 29 off 51, Anamul charged Thisara Perera and skied the ball over mid off, from where Dinesh Chandimal sprinted back but saw the ball just elude his desperate dive. Anamul's frenzied attitude however offered another chance. He was more than halfway back to the striker's end as Chandimal gathered the ball and hurled it back, but Tamim said no to a second run. The throw was not on the mark as Anamul scampered back. A ball later when he got the strike back, he duly edged a hook to be on his way.
REVERSE LEG SPIN
The ball tracking technology to adjudicate on leg-before decisions is a welcome feature, but Bangladesh's Nasir Hossain may not agree with it. In the 49th over, Perera reversed a full-pitched delivery back into Nasir, who was facing his first ball. The movement beat Nasir and the umpire turned down the appeal, rightly it seemed as the ball seemed to be tailing just down the leg side. Sri Lanka asked for the review and in the ball-tracking replay, that impression seemed to be accurate till the point of impact, with the ball coming in from outside off stump to hit in front of middle. But while most ball trackers would have extended the predictive path from the actual path – i.e. continue towards the leg stump – this time it just drew a straight line from the point of impact to the middle stump, and Nasir had to walk back with a first-ball duck to a ball that was effectively shown to be a reverse swinging leg-break.
YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM SHAKIB
With stand-in captain Dinesh Chandimal and Asela Gunaratne at the crease and the score reading 106 for four, there was still an outside chance for Sri Lanka to pull of something special. But then Shakib Al Hasan happened. In the 25th over, Chandimal pushed a Mohammad Saifuddin delivery to the off side and set off for what seemed a viable quick single. Shakib, however, swooped in from mid off and, with one stump to aim at, ran Chandimal out. In the very next over he dismissed Gunaratne and Wanindu Hasaranga off successive deliveries and added the scalp of Thisara Perera in the 30th over. This after scoring 67 with the bat.
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