|| CF Correspondent ||
Bangladesh left-handed opener Soumya Sarkar scored his first half-century in the Bangladesh Premier League after a gap of four years as he went down battling against Rajshahi Royals during their 15-run loss at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Saturday.
Soumya has consistently failed to deliver in the shortest format, raising questions over his ability as a Twenty20 cricketer despite being touted as one of the most explosive batsmen of Bangladesh.
Soumya hailed as the future of Bangladesh cricket for his extravagant stroke-making ability but his shoddy numbers in the shortest format always raised the question whether he does possess the ability to be the next big thing.
Soumya, who has been a regular name in the national team setup since the 2015 World Cup, eventually succeeded to prove his worth in the T20 format with a blazing 88 runs with five boundaries and six over boundaries but it went vain as he did not find any able partner to give him the required support from the other end.
Until his unbeaten half-century against Rajshahi Royals, Soumya played a total of 57 matches in the BPL for six different franchises but has managed to score only one fifty-plus innings, an unbeaten 58 against Chittagong Vikings for the Rangpur Riders which came way back in 2015 edition.
‘’Soumya played fantastically well today straight from ball one and that’s what you need in the chase. He was not worried about getting out and you need to go and take the game on to the opposition and he did that fantastically well and take the reward from it,’’ Cumilla Warriors skipper Dawid Malan told reporters after the match.
The rest of us did not have that impetus. Wiese came in and start hitting from ball one. Getting the batting order right has been tough we have a lot of batters wanted to bat in the top three and its all about how you balance that out,’’ he said,
Though Soumya played some brilliant shots on his way to the unbeaten half-century it cannot take away the fact that his stats present an extremely dire picture as he failed to score any half-century considering he batted in the top-three in 38 out of those 58 matches in the BPL.
The 26-year old scored a half-century after 45 innings but he possessed the lowest average for a batsman, who has scored at least 500 runs in BPL.
His rate of scoring has also been nowhere near par as he has a strike-rate of the second-lowest strike-rate in BPL for a player who has scored a minimum of 500 runs.
The left-hander, who was even named as an icon player for the 2016 BPL, has so far extended his sub-par BPL record in the running edition, by scoring 147 runs in six matches, with the highest score of 41 before this game.