No shortage of incidents as Sylhet phase begins

There was no shortage of controversies as the Sylhet phase of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) began yesterday at the Sylhet Divisional Cricket Stadium.

Shakib with another crucial performance

A Sumon Khan delivery in the first ball of the fifth over to Liton Das went down the leg-side for four runs and a wide but the umpire had called a dead-ball before release as DRS was unavailable due to technical reasons. Fortune Barishal skipper Shakib Al Hasan, coming out of the players' area, talked animatedly to the fourth umpire asking for the reason as his side missed out on five runs. Next over, Shakib himself came onto the crease after Nazmul Hossain's dismissal and again talked to the umpires, not exactly happy with the dead-ball incident. However, he did come up with another important innings, departing after a 37-ball 50 following Munim Shahriar's 25-ball 45, to propel Barishal to 155 for 5. Two wickets in his first two overs, accounting for Liton and Imrul Kayes saw him finish with two for 20 as Barishal went top of the table after a 32-run win.

Taskin ruled out of BPL

Sylhet Sunrisers informed yesterday that pacer Taskin Ahmed has been ruled out of the rest of the BPL owing to back injury. A day before, Taskin was seen partaking in some running exercises at Sylhet training at the Academy Ground but did not bowl or field. Taskin returned to Dhaka yesterday and will look to recover before the upcoming Afghanistan series, slated to begin from February 23.

'Save me'

BCB batting consultant Jamie Siddons arrived at the stadium along with selector Habibul Bashar to look at proceedings while his role is yet to be confirmed. With media personnel hounding the former Bangladesh coach, attempting to get a bite out of him, Siddons joked with a known face among the journalists saying 'save me'.

Soumya Sarkar (82*) and Mushfiqur Rahim (62*) had an unbroken 136-run stand as Khulna Tigers beat Sylhet Sunrisers by 15 runs in the second match of the day. Photo: FIROZ AHMED

Sylhet's captaincy troubles

Following on Chattogram Challengers' footsteps, Sylhet Sunrisers surprised with a captaincy change of their own, this time right before the toss of the evening match against Khulna Tigers with Ravi Bopara coming as captain at the toss.

The team sheet had named Mosaddek Hossain as captain but had Bopara's signature on it. Sylhet's team manager Kazi Al Mashuk Bari was contacted by The Daily Star and he informed that they had made a mistake in the team sheet which was signed by him along with Bopara. Mosaddek, apparently had asked to be relieved of captaincy a few days ago. "Mosaddek talked to the coach after arriving at the field today and following discussion we talked to Bijoy and Mithun again, but they rejected the request to take over. Then we approached Bopara and he will be the captain from now," the manager told The Daily Star.

New captain Bopara would then get embroiled in controversy as he was caught on camera tampering with the ball with his fingernails. The on-field umpires immediately noticed and changed the ball while penalising Sylhet with five runs for the offence. There was no official confirmation of the incident from the BCB till filing of this report.