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Mustafiz shows the way


Bangladeshpost
Published : 17 Jun 2019 09:12 PM | Updated : 07 Sep 2020 10:54 PM

Bappu Mahmud

Mustafizur Rahman, also known as the Fizz for his fiery bowling, came to the rescue of the Team Bangladesh again on Monday. When the Windies were heading for posting a mammoth total to the region of around 400 after scoring 240 in 39, the Fizz came to bowl his sixth over and took the crucial wickets to Hetmyer and Andre Russel.

This fiery over of Mustafiz boosted the morale of the Tigers and the other bowlers also produced some good spell of bowling and eventually restricted the Windies to 321. Young pacer Saifuddin came up with the best bowling figure for Bangladesh taking 3 wickets for 72 runs.
Earlier, Bangladesh captain Mashrafe bin Murtaza won the toss and opted to bowl first against West Indies in their fifth World Cup game at the Cooper Associates County Ground.

Despite the extra specialist batsman, Darren Bravo at 8, West Indies have stumbled at the end of the innings. Mustafizur came back strongly in the last 15 overs. Despite the occasional big over, Bangladesh have got regular wickets to keep something of a hold on West Indies. Hetmyer and Holder had set them up for, potentially, a 350 finish. At the very least they would have liked 330. But larger picture, 321 is a good score. Bangladesh let the game drift away after getting Gayle early and West Indies capitalised on it. Hope falling narrowly short of a hundred as Lewis, Pooran, Hetmyer, and Holder took the bowling on around him.

Mustafizur Rahman has got back Bangladesh's body language up too, with back to back two big wickets. The Pooran-Hetmyer partnership had taken the sting out of their energy levels but Tamim's catch, and Russell's wicket has got them back up. The 35th over, when Hope attacked him, Mustafizur seemed to have lost complete control and West Indies seemed to have turned the match decisively. But he's returned and probably reduced the damage with those wickets.

In reply of the Windies innings, the Tigers started off quite well. The opening pair of Tamim Iqbal and Soumya Sarker put together 52 runs in 8.2 overs before Soumya fell to Andre Russel scoring 29 off 23 balls. As of filing this report, Bangladesh were 70 for the loss of 1 wicket after 10 overs. Tamim was not out on 26 while Shakib was batting on 8.