Photo: ZEE News
Bangladesh rode solid batting display from Shakib al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim followed by a great bowling performance to make a winning start to their campaign in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. Afghanistan in their first appearance failed to make much of an impact but tried their best to force the result in their favour.
Bangladesh after winning the toss decided to bat first and set up a total of 267 losing all the wickets in full quota of 50 overs. Mushfiqur Rahim (71) scored an excellent half-century and led his team from the front. Shakib’s contribution of 63 runs off just 51 balls also played an important role in Bangladesh’s run getting past the 250-run mark. The Afghan pace bowlers made a good start thanks to Hamid Hassan and Shapoor Zadran as they prevented Bangladesh from getting off to a flying start. But Shakib and Rahim played beautifully to guide the Bangladeshi innings to a respectable position.
However it was a disappointing performance from the Afghan batsmen as they lost 3 wickets in 3 overs that somewhat left them rattled. They did not have enough fire power to chase the target 268 runs after suffering such a jolt very early in the innings. Bangladeshi bowlers, especially Mashrafe Mortaza, really put up a dominant performance that broke the backbone of the Afghan batting line-up. Their innings was wrapped up at the cost of 162 runs. The most experienced campaigner for Afghanistan Mohammad Nabi top scored for them with 44 runs. Samiullah Shenwari came close second with 42 runs. For Bangladesh Mortaza picked up 3 wickets and Shakib got 2. Rubel Hossain, Taskin Ahmed and Mahmudullah Riad picked up one wicket each.
With a comfortable win by 105 runs Bangladesh got the necessary confidence that will be needed to make an impact in the rest of the matches as they will have to face South Africa, India and Pakistan as the tournament proceeds. Afghanistan on the other hand will look to win hearts besides trying to make an impact as they know quite well that they cannot make much of an impact in the long run. But all they will try is to make it interesting with some exciting display of cricket.
Tags: ICC Cricket World Cup 2015
