A serious Mirpur warm-up match
Mashrafe Bin Mortaza continued his good run as captain as he led his side to a three-wicket win at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday. There is no need to go scrambling to find the scorecard online as it was not in fact a competitive match but a practice game in which his Red Team defeated Nasir Hossain's Green Team despite Mushfiqur Rahim's fine knock of 90 in the 50-over affair.
The word 'practice' may conjure thoughts of a game between members of a preliminary squad not taken too seriously, but Mashrafe told all players before the match to treat it like they a play a proper one-day match.
Take it from Mahmudullah Riyad, who continued his good form with an unbeaten 62 to help Mashrafe's side win the match. “It's a good start. Everybody was focussed even though it's a practice game. Mashrafe bhai told us to play the match with the mentality of playing the proper game. We were waiting for this match because we would play a match after a long gap. We have two more matches and I hope everybody will perform much better there.”
It was a low-scoring game as the Green Team scored 194 which the Reds overcame in 44.4 overs.
“The wicket was bit difficult in the morning. In the second innings the ball swung well. I hope everybody will try their best in the next matches to do much better than we did in today's game,” Riyad explained the reason behind the low-scoring game.
While the discussion everywhere yesterday involved the decision the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) was going to take about their team's tour to Bangladesh in October, Riyad said that they were only focussing on their preparation for the home series against England.
“We are only thinking on our preparation. We are hopeful that they (England) will come and we are taking preparation to play the series. We are looking to play competitive cricket both in the ODI and Test series. We are only thinking about how we can make our best preparation and we don't think outside that,” said a confident Riyad.
“I think that the issue that everybody has been discussing is a global crisis. We can say that we are hopeful about their arrival. And we are looking for a good series,” he continued.
Riyad also said that everyone in the camp were only thinking of how they could improve their performance.
“We have had a long training camp and after that we got a chance to play a match. We have the BCL [Bangladesh Cricket League] next, so everybody is planning with their own performance. How we can improve is our only motto,” said Riyad.
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