TIGERS moving towards clean sweep
Anamul Haque might be ruing his missed century but captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza should be the happiest man after the way the Tigers secured the series against Zimbabwe with two matches in hand at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur last night in front of a near-capacity crowd.
The home side were near-perfect in all three departments on their way to a massive 124-run victory in the third ODI, barring the individual milestone from someone at the top of the order, as Anamul and Tamim Iqbal carried on their good form to set it up for the bowlers to finish off the job.
There were a lot of similarities with the second ODI except for the late surge which improved a lot to increase the total. Like the second game, a hundred-plus opening partnership was again broken by a freakish run-out of Tamim while Mashrafe and Arafat Sunny were the stars with the ball.
Zimbabwe only won the toss to send their opponents in first, but everything else was won by the hosts who recorded their biggest win over their southern African rivals in terms of runs.
The Tigers kept improving with the series' progression and made their opponents look poorer on way to taking the 3-0 winning lead as the visitors were bowled out for 173 with 10.1 overs left in their chase of a mammoth 298 runs.
When Bangladesh piled up a total close to three hundred runs, the result was already written on the wall for the Zimbabweans. The fans started to leave the ground as soon as Brendan Taylor was trapped in front by left-arm spinner Shakib Al Hasan, his only scalp of the match after a quick 33-ball 40, with the scoreboard reading 82 for five.
Player-of-the-match Anamul might have guided the innings with his 95 that featured nine boundaries, but almost everybody played their part except for a struggling Mominul Haque.
Tamim and Anamul started watchfully like the previous match. The 121-run partnership ended after Tamim (40) had dropped his bat and jumped to reach the popping crease. Hamilton Masakadza broke the stumps at the non-striker's end as the batsman's foot was still in the air.
A 72-run fourth-wicket partnership between Shakib and Mushfiqur Rahim in just eight overs upped the tempo before Mahmudullah Riyad and Shabbir Rahman provided the final flourish as Bangladesh collected 103 runs from the last ten overs.
Mashrafe Once more led from the front by taking the first two wickets to initiate the collapse. After that it was left-arm spinner Sunny, who for the second successive game, finished with four wickets to mop up the tail.
Comments