At a time of Indian cricket booming, even when the rest of the world deals with the scales of recession, no one would have expected cricket in India to see an Indian team lose. But that it can happen was brought home once again.
India losing to Bangladesh has happened before but that Bangladesh have put up this strong a performance has been rare. So a victory like this definitely requires accolades.
After the stupendous success of the ICL Twenty20 championships, the ICL is now in its second season of its ICL World Series Twenty20 tournament and already, the contest appears spiced up. After enticing ICL India versus ICL Pakistan match later, close on the heels comes the match that saw ICL Bangladesh fight back with strong momentum that put the Indian team under pressure and eventually won the contest.
ICL India’s fielding has been below par in this tournament and that they got through against Pakistan may have relaxed them enough to take ICL Bangladesh lightly. But nothing about the Bangladesh’s performance was light. Their batting was power packed; such was the extent that even when the match appeared tight the Bangladesh batsmen did not give up, elicited a few glaring fielding errors from the Indians and eventually found themselves very much alive in the tournament.
Leading the way once again was Shariar Nafees who has made a name for himself worldwide first for the Bangladesh national team and showed the worth of his signing as Bangladesh have shone in their first year of the ICL as Dhaka Warriors and as the ICL Bangladesh.
The Indian innings stood up because of the brief partnership between Ibrahim Khaleel and Ambati Rayudu but it was R. Sathish who gave the innings the much needed fillip with forty valuable runs. Chasing down ICL India’s 164, Bangladesh relied heavily on Nafees and Aftab Ahmed’s partnership primarily and later as Nafees paved the road, Alok Kapali once again brought his belligerence to the fore and show the spectators which was the superior team on the day, ICL Bangladesh winning by five wickets.
Zulu at it again
Earlier the ICL World began on a winning note thanks to another blistering knock by Lance Klusener at the top of the ICL World innings and then, chipping in with three crucial wickets to break the middle order of the ICL Bangladesh team. Even then, ICL Bangladesh had moments to think that they could have still got through to winning the match if they had showed a little more discipline and application as they went on to lose the game by twelve runs.
Pakistan beaten
But ICL India had no such problems in their opening match against ICL Pakistan. Though their fielding was slightly less abysmal than it was against ICL Bangladesh, ICL India needed to rely on their bowlers, Jesuraj and Murtaza, to ensure that the tall ICL Pakistan line up was reined in at all times, both wickets picking up three wickets each for their efforts.
With both, Imran Farhat and Imran Nazir, failing to fire, it took partnerships like the one between Rana Naved and Shahid Yousuf and later between Inzamam-ul Haq and Abdul Razzaq to push Pakistan to 165. As it turned out, the target would be enough to test the Indians but not surpass them.
Ibrahim Khaleel and Ambati Rayudu gave ICL India a crucial sixty-seven run partnership and the latter was instrumental in ensuring India got ever closer to the target. However, slips and slides also meant Hemang Badani was required to make another fighting cameo for ICL India to overcome ICL Pakistan by four wickets.
The stage is set for more tight battles, the first of these being the match between the ICL World and ICL Pakistan later today.
The ICL World Team, already in a spot of bother over the injury to Ian Harvey, will now have to contend with Nicky Boje who has flown back to South Africa to be by his ailing son.
