Sports Reporter: Mashrafe-Mushfique’s experienced Sylhet team blew away Chittagong in the ninth season of Bangladesh Premier League (BPL). Sylhet strikers have shown equal skill in bat and ball. Mashrafe Bin Murtaza’s team defeated Chittagong Challengers by a big margin of 8 wickets. They could not even score a hundred runs. Nazmul Hasan Shanto came down to bat for Sylhet. His great innings won the team by 8 wickets.
Chittagong scored 89 runs after losing the toss and batting first in the scheduled 20 overs, losing 9 wickets in the opening match at Mirpur Shere Bangla National Cricket Stadium. Sylhet won with 45 balls to answer.
Chittagong’s disaster started with the run-out of opener Mehdi Maruf (11) in the team’s 11 runs. Then Darwis Rasooli was caught by Mushfiqur Rahim by Sylhet’s Pakistani pacer Mohammad Amir.
Rezaur Rahman Raja sent captain Shubhagat Home (1) to Sajghar. Coming to the bowling, spinner Colin Ackerman dismissed Nama Al-Amin (18) for three. Mushfiqur stamped this batter facing 20 balls. After that, Usman Khan (2) and Praksha Chand (5) returned as the second and third victims of the king. Having lost 6 wickets for 62 runs, Chittagong practically could not turn around.
Experienced pacer Mashrafe saw the wicket by dismissing Mrutunjoy Chowdhury. After that, Pakistani pacer Amir saw his second wicket by sending off Afif Hussain (25) who was sitting on the wicket by making a catch by the wicketkeeper Mushfiq. And in his last over, Raja picked up his fourth wicket of the match by returning Nahiduzzaman (8).
Rezaur Rahman Raja picked up 4 wickets at the cost of 14 runs in 4 overs. And in the same over, Amir managed to get 2 wickets at the cost of only 7 runs with a maiden. Besides, Mashrafe and Ackerman took 1 wicket each.
Mrityunjoy dismissed Colin Ackerman (1) early on when he came out to bat for the win. After that, Nazmul Hasan Shanto started reaching the target with Zakir Hossain. Bangladesh’s two Test openers put on 63 runs off 45 balls. Pushpakumarar was the victim of Zaki who scored 27 runs off 21 balls to make the win easy. Shanto finished the rest with Mushfiqur Rahim. He remained unbeaten with 43 runs off 41 balls. Mushfiq scored 6 runs unbeaten.
