Bangladesh yesterday pulled off a stunner by beating west indies in the 23rd match of ICC men’s World Cup on Tuesday. West Indies registered a very comprehensive total of 321 at the loss of 8 wickets. At the mid-break, it looked quite defendable with the kind of experienced bowling attack W Indies has.
But Bangladeshi batsmen left no leaves unturned to win this contest. After all, it was a comprehensive victory for the Tigers with 7 wickets in hands and 8.3 overs to spare. West Indies got a sloppy start with Gayle dismissed on a duck, his only second in World Cup cricket. Yet Lewis, Hope, and Hetmyer shined by scoring 70, 96 and 50 runs respectively. Windies were looking all set to grab another 350 marks, but some great death bowling by Bangladesh restricted them to a below just par 321. Bangladesh Batting innings was all class with a good stage set by Soumya Sarkar and Tamim Iqbal giving a start of 52 in 8.2 overs.
And then arrived in the middle, a man with loads of experience and in the form of his life batsman Shaqib al Hasan he scored a match-winning knock of 124 of 99 with the blistering strike rate of 122.5. In this innings, he set a new record of scoring 6000 ODI runs and picking up 250 ODI wickets faster than anybody in the world with just 202 Odis under his belt. He was getting enough support from his partner Liton Das who missed his century just by 6 runs by remaining not out, in which he played some wonderful strokes. This knock by Shakib surely proves he played a gem of an innings and is on the peak of his form. Bangladesh climbed this mountain of 322 runs by keeping 51 legal deliveries spare.
This run chase will surely add on to the confidence of this Bangladeshi side for their remaining matches. And this comprehensive defeat is surely going to put West Indies in a spot of a bother, especially their shot selections and fielding departments. Deeply analyzing the situations in which both teams have put themselves into, we can just say Bangladesh team have come a long way to make run chases like these, surely it takes hell amount of training and they are on the right track and all set to be the next big thing out there in coming years. Bangladesh has made a strong statement that they are no underdogs anymore but on the other side, West Indies have fared miserably with regards to their temperament, the approach towards the game and their on-field attitude. Since they have lost 3 out of 5 games they have played, their chances of making to the knockouts are slimming. They need to analyze their situation properly in the mere future and make a strong comeback, just like their on-paper line up they need to make a mark on points table also.
