Bangladesh had their pride at stake in the dead rubber contest against Afghanistan at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. The Afghans sealed the series 2-0 by winning both of the first two clashes in the three-T20I series.

Winning the toss, Afghanistan opted to bat first. Following a mediocre batting performance, they scored 145 runs for 6 wickets.

Samiullah Shenwari’s unbeaten 33-run knock was the highest individual innings from the Afghan camp. Mohammad Shahzad and Asghar Stanikzai also scored 20-odd runs at the top but the middle-order batsmen failed to make their mark and hence the team could not manage to register a bigger total.

Abu Jayed and Nazmul Islam took two wickets each for the Tigers. Shakib Al Hasan, Ariful Haque also picked up one wicket apiece.

Meanwhile, Shakib became the fastest player to reach 10,000 runs and 500 wickets in international cricket. He has achieved the feat in 302 matches to surpass former South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis, who reached the milestone in 420 matches. Former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi is the only third player to have claimed the feat and it took him 477 matches to do so.

Bangladesh lost three wickets in the powerplay while chasing and a whitewash was pretty much on the cards for the hapless side. After Tamim Iqbal’s dismissal for 5 runs, both Liton Das and Soumya Sarkar got run out in the same over and ironically in the same fashion. Liton made 12 runs and Soumya added 15 runs to the total. Shakib Al Hasan also departed right after entering a double-digit score.

The onus was now on Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah Riyad to salvage the pride of the Tigers and they tried their best until Rashid Khan broke their 84-run partnership in first delivery of the last over, when Bangladesh needed nine runs to avoid a whitewash.

Mushfiq clubbed 46 runs before leaving the crease and Mahmudullah got run out in the last delivery and made 45 runs, but that was not enough to prevent the single-run loss for the visitors.

Rashid Khan, Karim Janat, and Mujeeb Ur Rahman all bagged one wicket each and helped their side whitewash a Test-playing nation for the fourth time in a bilateral T20 series.