Tigers excel in a game of partnerships
The second ODI yesterday turned out to be another tense affair in the end after the first one was won by just a wicket.
The match went right down to the wire, in fact to the last delivery and Mustafizur Rahman prevailed against India captain Rohit Sharma, thwarting a six that was needed off the last delivery to win the game by five runs and clinch what was Bangladesh's second consecutive bilateral ODI series win against India at home following the triumph of 2015.
Skipper for the series Liton Das found the joy of winning two close contests against India and said his team will go with the same mentality for the third and final ODI in Chattogram.
"Very happy to win in my first series as captain, it feels good," Liton said at the post-match presentation ceremony yesterday as the Tigers now look to seal a memorable whitewash.
"We felt that 240-250 was a good score. We were under pressure but they were brilliant. The focus for the next game will also be about winning," he added.
When Mehedi Hasan Miraz pumped his fist in the air on the last delivery of the Bangladesh innings yesterday, the moment raised the roof of the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, filled to the rafters. Miraz, having prevailed under such uncertainty in the first ODI, had found himself coming into bat in a similar scenario with Bangladesh down six wickets for just 69 runs.
At the end of innings, he had propelled the Tigers to 271 for seven, playing some extraordinary shots along the way to his maiden ODI ton, becoming just the second batter after Ireland's Simi Singh to hit a ton as a number eight. The expectations from Miraz are great after two immense knocks. "Last few years, I have worked hard on the batting and focused on certain areas to improve," Miraz said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
There was uneven bounce on the surface and not just in terms of low bounce as a couple just flew off the surface too, catching batters off-guard. In Mahmudullah Riyad, Miraz had a partner at the other end facing criticism for lack of runs. The duo put colour back on Bangladesh's face with a 148-run stand -- the second-highest seventh-wicket stand for Bangladesh in ODIs and the highest ODI stand for Bangladesh for any wicket against India.
"My coaches have given me a lot of information on improving my game. Riyad Bhai kept telling me that we need to keep playing deep into the innings, and the conversations were mostly about keeping small targets of partnerships," Miraz added.
Miraz also picked up key wickets of KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer with the ball. "I was just trying to hit the good areas with the ball and put pressure on them," said the allrounder.
It did not appear after the first half that the game would be so close. Rohit Sharma, who came in at number nine after an injury to his left-hand thumb, almost pulled off a miracle during an unbeaten 28-ball 51. The India skipper informed he had a 'dislocation' which fortunately was not a fracture. "Not taking anything away from Mehedi and Mahmudullah, was a great partnership, but we also need to find ways of breaking such partnerships," Rohit said at the post-match ceremony. "In one-day cricket, it's about partnerships and when you get those, you have to ensure that they are converted to match-winning partnerships. That's what they did," he concluded.
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