It was a combination of some good left-arm bowling that demolished the Bangladeshi A batting line-up and helped the visiting West Indies High Performance team take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match one-day series. Promising young pacer Sheldon Cotterrell and slow-left arm bowler Verasammy Permaul shared 8 wickets as the visitors bowled the hosts out for a mere 181 runs at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday and romped to a 53-run victory.
Chasing a target of 234, Bangladesh A slumped to trouble early in the game when discarded national opener Imrul Kayes who had scored a half-century in the previous game was caught off Cotterrell in the very first over. Anamul Haque followed suit as he became the left-hander’s second victim of the day when the wicketkeeper-batsman was caught while playing a rash shot in the third over.
Shahriar Nafees and skipper Rokibul Hasan shared a 57-run partnership for the third wicket to steady the innings for a brief period. The introduction of spin had an immediate effect as Rokibul was caught in front off Permaul after the skipper failed to read the arm ball. Wickets continued to tumble for the Bangladeshis and a majority of them, oddly, got out to slow-left armers, the kind of bowling that one would expect them to have mastered by now.
Nafees, who scored a well-composed 69, was the only batsman who read the ball well. However, with the required run-rate increasing, he too perished at the end, as the West Indian bowlers set their sights on the tailenders. They were eventually bowled out in the 43rd over.
Earlier, a string of partnerships between the middle order batsmen and some late hitting by the tailenders took the visitors to a competitive 234 all out. Jahmar Hamilton top scored for the visitors with a 50-ball 49. The innings witnessed three huge sixes and two fours. The West Indian batsmen were struggling at 155 for 6 in the 37th over before a partnership between Permaul and Hamilton took them past 200.
The last 50-over game will be played on Tuesday, after which the teams will play two Twenty20 games.
SCORES IN BRIEF
WIHP: 234 all out in 49.5 overs (Hamilton 49, Lesporis 44; Naeem 3-47, Enamul 2-30)
BANGLADESH A: 181 all out in 43 overs ( Nafees 69, Naeem 34; Permaul 4-33, Sheldon 4-40)
Result: WIHP won by 53 runs.
Player-of-the-match: Verasammy Permaul.
-With The Daily Star input
