South Zone were craving to become the most successful team in the Bangladesh Cricket League (BCL) by winning their third title. And they have certainly done so by surpassing North Zone in the points table with a win against that very team.

Abdur Razzak’s expert hands played a crucial part in finishing the clash in just three days and taking the glory away from North Zone in the very last round of the tournament. The veteran spinner took 11 wickets in the sixth and final round to take his team past the finishing line real quick.

North Zone, despite winning one match more than South Zone, lost the title and the match to them and fell 3 points short of the their cumulative points.

North Zone’s batting performance was miserable throughout the whole match and credit goes to Razzak as the 35-year-old kept adding to the opponents’ miseries time and again.

After taking a fifer in the 1^st innings, Razzak took a six-wicket haul in the second and took his tally of wickets to 43, 16 more than Sohag Gazi—the second most wicket-taker in this tournament so far.

Batting first, North Zone put up 187 and 115 runs in their two innings with South Zone scoring 365/8 in-between. Although North Zone were lucky enough to witness to fifties from Nazmul Hasan Shanto and Sohrawardi Shuvo in their 1^st innings, the 2^nd innings brought up a more disgraceful run-drought for them. They got bundled for a poultry total as an innings of 41 runs from Sohrawardi Shuvo was the only one that went past 20 while only four batsmen got into a double-digit score.

After smashing a century in South Zone’s 1^st innings, Imrul Kayes—recently excluded from the BCB central contracts—also took a wicket alongside Razzak’s six-fer while Saqlain Sajib scalped three. In the North Zone side, Farhad Reza was the peak bowler with a fifer.

The other match saw a run galore from Central Zone followed by another East Zone blitz. Both teams have already had a double-centurion, a centurion, and a half-centurion each but among these six landmark hitting innings, Liton Das’s double-ton was undoubtedly the best given the pressure his team was facing after being thrown under a stack of runs and losing two early wickets.

Liton lifted the total up with enough support from Tasmanul Haque and Afif Hossain. Afif clubbed a brilliant century and made 142 runs before returning to the pavilion after Tasmanul contributed 67 runs to the total.

Although Liton and Afif shared a 298-run stand, the partnership between Tasmanul and the wicketkeeper-batsman was more crucial as it helped the East Zone resuscitate their innings after two early blows.

After finishing on an unbeaten 139-run innings on day-2, Liton added 135 more runs today but missed his triple-century. He has now totaled 779 runs in the tournament, making him the most run-getter ahead of South Zone’s Tushar Imran who has 725 runs to his name.

East Zone are now at 592/6 and leading by 46 runs. Jaker Ali and Mohammad Saifuddin will resume the last day’s game—that is likely to end in a draw—from their scores of 32and 29 runs, respectively.