MOMENTS
JAHURUL'S WINNING ASSIST
The story of the first match of the day was about the battle between two West Indian big hitters in Dhaka Dynamites' Kieron Pollard and Khulna Titans' Carlos Brathwaite. Brathwaite hit six sixes in his 29-ball 64, and Pollard matched the maximums in his 24-ball 55 during the chase. In the end, it seemed to be Pollard's slightly higher strike rate that tilted matters in the end, but something that many will not remember about the match is that Brathwaite's superior bowling talent almost clinched the match. Defending just six runs in the last over, a paltry amount in the context of the match, Brathwaite delivered three inch-perfect yorkers to Jahurul Islam and suddenly the equation became a much more nerve-wracking five from three. It became four from two as Mosaddek Hossain took a single off the fourth ball. Then Jahurul came up with a moment of inspiration – the first reverse scoop he played in a match and it connected well enough to make it to the unmanned third man boundary. Pollard may have won the Caribbean battle, but he needed a Bangladeshi assist to get over the line.
DESTRUCTIVE RASHID
When one sees a stump broken into two pieces, it is usually a fast bowler of considerable pace that is the perpetrator, but yesterday it was a leg-spinner, and it was not Shahid Afridi bowling one of his faster ones. Comilla Victorians' leg-spinner Rashid Khan bowled a googly in the second ball of the 16th and Chittagong Vikings' right-hander Dilshan Munaweera went back to cut. Much like most other batsmen, Munaweera failed to read the variation and the quick, sharp incoming delivery clattered into timber, breaking the stump into two pieces. It also damaged the microphone and camera attached to the stump and the match officials had to set up a new one to resume play again. It seems the Afghanistan spinner is dangerous in more ways than one.
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