South rise to fourth title

South Zone clinched their fourth Bangladesh Cricket League title as skipper Abdur Razzak's five-for  ensured their nine-wicket triumph over North Zone on the fourth day of the final and sixth round of the tournament at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram yesterday.

The left-arm spinner ran riot as he scalped all the wickets that fell on the day, finishing the match with figures of 12 wickets for 144 runs -- his best match haul in this edition of the tournament. After Razzak's heroics helped bundle North out for 280, it was an easy task for the South batsmen as they reached the 33-run target in just 7.1 overs.

Even though it was skipper Razzak's bowling that helped South defeat North in the final round, it was an all-round team effort both with bat and bowl that brought them success in the tournament.

South banked on their slower bowlers throughout the tournament as two of their spinners -- Razzak and off-spinner Mahedi Hasan -- featured in the list of highest wicket-takers. The captain finished on top with 34 wickets in six matches while Mahedi secured third position as he scalped 23 wickets from the same number of matches.

With the bat, it was also one of South's players -- opener Anamul Haque -- who finished as the highest run-getter in the tournament with 658 runs. He was one of the consistent performers for South as he scored three fifties and two tons, the latest of which came in the final match against North -- 180 off 314 balls, which was also his highest score of the league.

Mahedi, who made a big impact with the ball for South, also shone with the bat as he was the fifth highest scorer this season, scoring 459 runs.

As the franchise-based tournament comes to a close, one thing that was different from previous editions is that the pacers were given plenty of overs this time around, especially on Bogura's green-top which was rightly exploited by the quicks.

Two pacers -- North's Ebadat Hossain and East Zone's Abu Zayed -- accounted for about 285 overs between them and they ended fourth and fifth in the wicket-takers' list with 21 and 20 wickets respectively, playing five matches each in the tournament.