Vikings rise on Mushy's shoulders
Once again, it was skipper Mushfiqur Rahim who made the difference as he stood firm and authored an unbeaten 46-ball 64 to ensure that Chittagong Vikings successfully chased a 158-run target against Rajshahi Kings to win by six wickets at the Sher-e-Bangla-National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday. The win meant that Mushfiqur has guided the Vikings to the top of the table for the first time in the sixth edition of the Bangladesh premier League.
Mushfiqur picked up in the new year from where he had left off in 2018 as the most consistent batman for Bangladesh across all formats carried his form with the national side to the BPL. Mushfiqur's scores of 25, 5 and 34 in the first three matches of the BPL might not seem very impactful but those knocks came at a stage of the tournament when most teams were struggling to post big totals and batsmen were still finding their feet on slow wickets. Since then, the 31-year-old scored two consecutive fifties -- 75 runs against Comilla Victorians and 52 against Khulna Titans -- and that was followed by a 23-ball 22 against Dhaka Dynamites in a winning cause, before authoring his unbeaten knock yesterday.
Prior to that, Mushfiqur had proved himself pivotal for Bangladesh too last year and even in 2017. Mushfiqur was consistent across all formats for Bangladesh as he finished 2018 as the top run-scorer in ODIs. He also became the only wicketkeeper-batsman to have scored two double-centuries in Tests when he penned a 219-run unbeaten epic against Zimbabwe in November. He also ended the year as the second-highest scorer in T20Is for Bangladesh.
The stalwart did not lose focus when he started the BPL campaign as Chittagong skipper; instead he held onto his consistency -- the mark of any great batsman.
Yesterday, after Rajshahi batsman Laurie Evans's 56-ball 74 and a late unbeaten cameo of 36 off 20 balls from South African all-rounder Christian Jonker had seen Rajshahi post a challenging total on the board, Chittagong looked nervy at the beginning of the chase. Chittagong were soon struggling, having lost four wickets for 71 runs in 10.5 overs.
However, Mosaddek Hossain joined skipper Mushfiqur at that stage. The pair remained unbeaten till the end as they strung together an 88-run fifth-wicket partnership to see their side over the line.
Following Mushfiqur's heroics, Chittagong replaced Shakib Al Hasan's Dhaka Dynamites at the top of the points table with 12 points earned by winning six of their seven matches. As the second Dhaka leg ended yesterday and with the current equations, surely Mushfiqur has handed his team a great advantage before the tournament moves to their home in Chattogram from tomorrow.
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