Bangladesh Tri-series 2008

Pakistan too good for Bangladesh, win easily

Pakistan won the first match of the Kitply tri-series tournament against hosts’ Bangladesh easily by 70 runs in Dhaka.

The match was reduced to 40 overs due to rain and the hosts did a good job to restrict Pakistan for 233/10 in 39.3 overs, specially after the start given by Salman Butt and Akmal who scored 70 and 25 respectively. Yousuf and Misbah-ul-Haq also did a great job for Pakistan in the middle overs by scoring a fast paced 59 and 39 respectively. The remainder of the team scored either single figures or played insignificant innings. Razzak and Kapali did the job for Bangladesh by taking 3 wickets each while Mortaza took 2 wickets.

On the Bangladesh side of things, there was nothing very interesting except Razzak’s innings towards the end when he scored 26 of 25 balls. Iqbal opened with a decent innings of 29 while Ashraful scored an extremely slow 56 runs from 96 balls – what was he thinking ? Bangladesh finished for 163/8 in their allotted 40 overs. Afridi and Riaz did the job for Pakistan by claiming 2 wickets each while Gul took 2 wickets towards the end. Afridi had not been in form with the bat recently but his place in the team is fully justified by his bowling performances which have improved over time.

Pakistan won the match by 70 runs and Salman Butt wad adjudged the official Man of the match. However, our man of the match was Afridi who laid the foundation by taking the initial wickets for Pakistan and also giving away very few runs at an average of 2.38 per over.

Tags: afridi, akmal, ashraful, Bangladesh, iqbal, kapali, kitply, misbah-ul-haq, pakistan, razzak, riaz, salman butt, tri-series, yousuf