Clicky
Sports, Cricket

Mominul topples Tamim with most tons for Tigers


Published : 06 Feb 2021 08:14 PM | Updated : 07 Feb 2021 01:13 AM

In the most prestigious format of cricket, only four cricketers had three thousand or more runs for Bangladesh before Saturday. They are Habibul Bashar, Mushfiqur Rahim, Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan. Left-hand batsman and Bangladesh Test skipper Mominul Haque now becomes their fifth Bangladeshi partner.

The Bangladesh Test captain touched this milestone at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram on Saturday. On the way to this achievement, he picked up his tenth career century on the fourth day of the first Test of the series against the West Indies. No other cricketer in Bangladesh has so many three-figure innings in white-ball cricket. Tamim is right behind him with nine centuries.

With an astounding knock of 115, Mominul returned to the dressing room with a taste of his seventh Test century in the same ground on Saturday. In an attempt to increase the lead quickly, he was dismissed by Windies pacer Shannon Gabriel. Kemar Roach took his catch in the deep square leg as he tried to play a lofted shot. Mominul hit a stunning 10 boundaries in his 182-ball innings. 

Before this Test, Mominul was 140 runs away from three-thousand runs club. He returned to the dressing room by just adding 26 runs in the first innings and therefore he needed another 114 runs in the second innings to reach that milestone. He reached that landmark during the 65th over of the day.

Mominul failed to prolong his good start of the first innings. However, he made amends in the second innings and batted smoothly to reach his century. At the end of Day 3, his run was 31. He completed fifty in the first session during Day 4 off 84 balls. Mominul’s desired moment came just after the lunch break. He took 173 balls for his ton, which was the slowest century of his career. However, it was a crucial one as it propelled Tigers to secure a mammoth lead of 394 runs and put Tigers on course to a victory.   

Meanwhile, Mominul also became the joint fourth in the list of scoring highest Test centuries in the same ground. Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene of Sri Lanka in Galle and Michael Clarke of Australia in Adelaide have seven centuries each. With 11 centuries at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo, Jayawardene holds the record for most centuries at a single venue.

Earlier, Habibul Bashar became the first Bangladeshi batsman to reach the 3,000-run milestone in the most elite version of cricket. The former star, who said goodbye to Tests in 2008, has scored 3,026 runs in 50 Tests.