Fighting spirit in tough impresses Bangladesh captain more than whitewash

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza is elated to see that his teammates brought their A game, much less give up, to fight their way out of trouble in the third ODI against Pakistan.

Sports Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 22 April 2015, 11:03 PM
Updated : 22 April 2015, 11:03 PM

The Bangladesh captain was keen to see how the team reacted when the going got tough. What he witnessed on Wednesday was that they fought back with greater ferocity in tough situations.
 
It pleased him more than even the ‘Banglawash’, the Bengali moniker for whitewash in cricket, did.
 
The Tigers made a clean sweep of the series with an eight-wicket drubbing of the  tourists in the final ODI in Mirpur.
 
Bangladesh bowlers made a spectacular comeback to restrict Pakistan to 250 earlier in the day at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
 
At 203 for 2 in the 39th over, Pakistan were poised to post a total in excess of 300. 
 
A confident 98-run partnership between new skipper Azhar Ali, who hit his first ODI century, and half-centurion Haris Sohail (52) meant the batsmen to come had the licence to go berserk in the late overs.
 
But the bowlers did not allow them to launch a damaging late assault. Backed up by fine fielding, they engineered a dramatic middle-order collapse, instead.
 
The Pakistanis lost the final eight wickets for 47 runs in 10.2 overs giving Bangladesh a below-par total to chase.
 
The Tigers continued their dominance in the series and won the match, with 63 balls to spare. 
 
A scintillating unbeaten 127 by Soumya Sarkar, his first in ODI, and a brilliant 64 by Tamim Iqbal saw the Tigers overhaul the target with great ease.
 
At the post-match press briefing, Mashrafe said, “I’m just very happy to see the team fight back from the bad situations.”
 
“It needed to be found out how the team does in tough situations. At one point, we thought they will post 300-320 runs. From there, we made a splendid comeback.  
“We will win every time we turn around this way,” he said.
 
Mashrafe led his team in turning the tide in their favour.
 
The skipper, spinners Arafat Sunny and Shakib Al Hasan, and pacer Rubel Hossain bagged two wickets apiece.
 
Mashrafe said he was happy with the team’s overall performance. “But we still have to continue improving.”

“We can make more changes to our game. We are not a finished product just yet. We will go up further if we continue to play this way,” he added.