Indian Premier League and Cricket News by IPL Cricket Forum

The tri nation’s tournament opener opened the chapters of the same old sorry story for Bangladesh. How many times has it happened that Bangladesh captains have been lured in to bowling first on a seemingly fresh and lively pitch and have ended up being batted out of the game by the half time. Bangladesh need to realize that whatever the conditions may be the only chance they have of winning against top teams is batting first posting a decent score and hope that their spinners come good. Even on a lively pitch, Bangladesh pacers don’t have the potency to bowl out good oppositions for totals that they could chase.

And on that, when captain Ashraful was batting there seemed to be a total lack of intent. He seemed to be playing for individual records than for his team. Time and again its been said and acknowledged that its better to go down fighting even if you go down badly than to accept a close defeat. He remained not out on 56 of 93 balls. There were times when Raqibul, Mushfiqur and Razzak held on to one end for decent amounts of time. Ashraful should have accelerated at those times than leave the task to his lesser experienced mates.

Butt continued from where he left in the last ODI series against Bangladesh where he scored an astounding 451 runs in five matches. Yousuf showed his class scoring 59 runs at more than a run a ball. Misbah at the end contributed a blitzkrieg 39 of 20 balls to take Pakistan to an almost unassailable 233 for 10 in 39.3 overs.

The only positive came out for Bangladesh from this match was that they were able to bowl out Pakistan and their ace bowlers Mortaza and Razzak who took 5 wickets between them, seem to be in good form. Alok Kapali also took 3 wickets but proved a bit too costly for the day.

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