RANGPUR START SLOWLY

February 13, 2013
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in Uncategorized

Rangpur Riders didn’t have a good start in the Bangladesh Premier League as they lost their first match against the Dhaka Gladiators by a profound margin of 35 runs.

This was the second win for the Dhaka Gladiators in the tournament. They had won their first match against the Khulna Royal Bengals.

Earlier, the captain of Dhaka Gladiators, Mashrafe Mortaza, won the toss and decided to bat first. Dhaka was off to a flyer. Luke Wright and Mohammad Ashraful, both were in attacking mood and they started smashing the Rangpur bowlers all around the park.

The opening partnership was broken in the fifth over. It was Amit Kumar who gave Dhaka the first blow by dismissing Luke Wright. Wright played a good knock of 22 runs. He faced 16 balls and hit 4 fours.

Even after the departure of Luke Wright, Ashraful didn’t let the run rate come down. He continued playing aggressive shots and added 57 runs with Anamul Haque for the second wicket.

Anamul Haque got out when the score of Dhaka was 91. Shakib Al Hasan also departed early, but, the Rangpur bowlers didn’t manage to stop the run flow from Ashraful’s bat.

After playing a fine knock of 73 runs, Ashraful was dismissed in the 16th over. At that time, the score of Dhaka was 145. It seemed that Rangpur would be able to stop Dhaka somewhere around 180. But, that wasn’t the case to be. Owais Shah and Joshua Cobb hit some big shots in the last few overs and took Dhaka past 200.

At the end of 20 overs, the score of Dhaka Gladiators was 202 runs for the loss of 5 wickets.

Rangpur Riders didn’t start well in reply. Three wickets were down at just 31. But, thereafter, Niall O’Brien and Nasir Hossain put up a 100-run stand and brought Rangpur back into the match. Nasir Hossain played an absolute blinder. He scored 80 runs off just 49 deliveries with the help of 5 fours and 6 sixes.

However, Hossain’s inning didn’t take Rangpur to victory. There was a lot of damage done at the start and even the late onslaught by O’Brien and Hossain couldn’t make up for that damage. Rangpur managed to score just 167 runs in 20 overs and lost the match.

Mohammad Ashraful was declared man of the match for his brilliant knock.

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NOT ENOUGH MATCHES

January 15, 2013
By admin
in Uncategorized

The opening batsman of the Bangladesh cricket team, Tamim Iqbal, has said that the Bangladeshi players don’t play enough test cricket and that’s why, their performance in the longest format of the game has been poor.

In 2012, the Bangladesh team played very few test matches. They played a couple of test matches against West Indies towards the end of the year. That was their first test series in the last 11 months. Bangladesh lost that series by 2-0.

The Bangladesh team will play its next series after a break of 3 months. That will be a 2-match test series against Sri Lanka in March. Thereafter, in April, they will play a 2-match test series with Zimbabwe.

When asked about the poor performance of the Bangladeshi team in test cricket, Tamim said, “One of the main reasons of our poor performance is that we don’t play too many test matches. We play very few test matches and that too after long gaps. So, that makes it difficult for the players to be consistent in this format of the game.”

“When you play test cricket regularly, you learn to take right decisions at the right time. But, if you don’t play test cricket too often, you find it difficult to soak the pressure in test matches. I think we will start getting better if we play more test matches.”

When asked about the performance of the Bangladesh team against West Indies, Tamim said, “I think we did well in every format. We lost both the test matches, but, we fought hard in the test series as well and succeeded in putting the Caribbean team under pressure at times.”

“In the ODI series, our performance was outstanding. That was probably one of our best performances so far. We fought till the last ball in the only T20 that we played. So, the overall performance of the team was quite satisfactory.”

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