||Desk Report||

The Asia Cup is getting more interesting with each passing game. Bangladesh and Pakistan are facing each other today at the Sheikh Abu Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi, where another fierce battle is expected between the two.

Winning the toss, Bangladesh chose to bat and faced yet another top-order collapse at the very before Mushfiqur Rahim and Mohammad Mithun weathered the storm.

Soumya Sarkar started for the Tigers replacing Nazmul Hossain in the opening spot. Shakib Al Hasan could not start for the Mashrafe-led side due to his long-standing finger injury. Mominul Haque replaced the ace all-rounder while Rubel Hossain came in for Nazmul Islam.

Making a return to the ODI team almost after a year, Soumya failed to make a memorable comeback as Junaid Khan, who is playing in place of Mohammad Amir, dismissed him for a duck.

Shaheen Afridi and Junaid Khan then splendidly bowled out Mominul Haque and Liton Das as Bangladesh became three down at 12 runs.

Mushfiqur and Mithun then carefully handled the Pakistan pace duo, before successfully taking on the spinners. With a couple of boundary at the latter part of the batting powerplay and a few overs after it, the batting pair ensured that the run rate slip down too much.

The two middle-order batsmen kept the score ticking by dealing in one and twos and did not go for any unnecessary shots when the opponents kept them from hitting any boundaries in the middle.

Both the batsmen have picked up a fifty and will look to add more runs to their 100+ runs’ partnership to take Bangladesh to a better position in the game.

 

Score

BAN – 136/3 (29 Overs)