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Dharamsala, 7 Oct: The glittering all-round performance of Mehidy Hasan Miraz headlined Bangladesh’s smooth six-wicket victory over Afghanistan in their World Cup opener here on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Miraz first employed his off-spin effectively to take 3 for 25, helping Bangladesh to bundle out Afghanistan for 156, and then returned to make a crucial 57 off 73 balls in his side’s facile chase that got over in 34.4 overs.<\/p>\n
Najmul Shanto too chipped in for the Tigers with a patient unbeaten 59 off 83 balls.<\/p>\n
Chasing 157, Bangladesh were wobbling a bit at 27 for 2 after openers Tanzid Hasan and Litton Das returned within the first seven overs.<\/p>\n
However, Miraz and Shanto milked 97 runs for the third wicket in just above 22 overs to carry Bangladesh closer to the finishing line.<\/p>\n
The tackiness in the pitch made a cautious approach mandatory for the Bangladesh batters, and they responded to the task while rotating the strike efficiently through nips and tucks around.<\/p>\n
However, they also did not miss any opportunity to free their arms. Shanto danced down the tracks to deposit Mujeeb Ur Rahman over long on for a clean six.<\/p>\n
Fittingly, it was Shanto who brought the winning runs when he smashed pacer Naveen-ul-Haq for two successive boundaries.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Shakib Al Hasan and Miraz exploited a slightly tacky pitch to the hilt to restrict Afghanistan to a meagre 156.<\/p>\n
Shakib and Miraz shared six wickets equally among them as Afghanistan spectacularly imploded, as only Rahmanullah Gurbaz (47 off 62 balls) offered some token fight.<\/p>\n
However, there was no sign of such a collapse when Afghanistan were comfortably placed at 112 for two in the 25th over.<\/p>\n
Gurbaz and skipper Hashmatullah Shahidi were consolidating their third-wicket alliance, but the pace-spin combination of Mustafizur Rahman and Miraz rocked Afghanistan with two wickets in five balls.<\/p>\n
Miraz was the first to come to the party. Shahidi, who was struggling to force pace against spinners, finally went for a desperate big shot off the off-spinner that was snaffled by Towhid Hridoy at mid-on.<\/p>\n
Gurbaz too soon departed as his attempt to clear Rahman ended in the hands of Tanzid Hasan in the deep.<\/p>\n
From that point, the Afghans slipped into a panic mode, and lost wickets at regular intervals as Bangladesh bowlers mounted pressure on them with a tidy spell.<\/p>\n
Shakib’s performance too deserved a special mention. The Bangladesh captain, who elected to field first, led the bowlers from the front with an impeccable show of spin bowling.<\/p>\n
The veteran left-arm spinner is expected to lead Bangladesh’s bowling effort in this tournament, and Shakib showed that he is ready for the task with a fine display on this day.<\/p>\n
The Afghanistan batsmen, who has a reasonable amount of experience in tackling spin, failed to read him either off the hand or off the pitch.<\/p>\n
The dismissal of Najibullah Zadran underlined that point. Zadran failed to read a ball that came along with the hand and held its line.<\/p>\n
The ball went past his tentative push to rattle the stumps, and Afghanistan were in all sorts of trouble, a position that ended with their defeat. (PTI)<\/p>\n
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Dharamsala, 7 Oct: The glittering all-round performance of Mehidy Hasan Miraz headlined Bangladesh’s smooth six-wicket victory over Afghanistan in their World Cup opener here on Saturday. Miraz first employed his off-spin effectively to take 3 for 25, helping Bangladesh to bundle out Afghanistan for 156, and then returned to make a crucial 57 off 73 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}