Pollard proves a point

In Khulna when he pulled a short ball from Abdur Razzak straight to the midwicket fielder, Kieron Pollard was furious with himself. He vented his
anger to reporters who later had asked if it was the right time to play the shot.
An enraged Pollard said he chose the right ball to hit but only could not beat the fielder, who was nicely positioned. He also promised to send the ball to the boundary if he gets the same delivery in the next match.
Pollard could not do anything spectacular in the next three matches making 25, one and 2 runs respectively, which made him one of the flops for West Indies in the series.
But the all-rounder finally proved his point in the fifth and final match on Saturday when he scored a blistering 85 off 74 balls to help his team post 217 all out in 48 overs.
Before he came to the crease West Indies had lost three wickets on the same score of 77 runs and had conceded five maidens which put them under huge pressure in the series deciding match.
But Pollard hit a few sixes to settle in the middle and ease off the pressure. He added a record 132 runs for the fourth wicket with Darren Bravo to give them a competitive total finally on a difficult Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium pitch.
Pollard and Bravo (51) bettered the record of Jimmie Adams and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who scored 92 runs in Dhaka in 1999 in their fourth-wicket stand against Bangladesh.
Pollard treated all three four specialist spinners of Bangladesh in the same manner to hit as many as eight sixes. He opened his account by cracking a huge six over the mid-wicket fence off off-spinner Sohag Gazi, but left-arm spinner Elias Sunny bore brunt of his brutal hitting.
Pollard struck Sunny for five sixes, one of which brought up his fifty off 49 balls. On any other day, this would have been normal but not in this game where Chris Gayle, another powerful hitter of the ball faced 19 balls to score just two runs.
Abdur Razzak and Mahmudullah were at the receiving end in Pollard’s other two sixes. Given the manner he was hitting sixes it looked like the record of Shane Watson, who smashed 15 sixes against Bangladesh in April at this venue, was in danger.
Occasional left-arm spinners Mominul Haque saved Bangladesh from the second such ignominy twice in two years when he bowled Pollard for his first international wicket.
But the damage was already done, wasn’t it?