Sylhet Strikers finally snapped a painful five-match losing streak Friday after beating Durdanto Dhaka by 15 runs in their last match of the Sylhet phase of Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) at Sylhet International Cricket Stadium.
Mohammad Mithun who was chosen to lead the team after Mashrafe Bin Mortaza took a break from the BPL to join the 12th Parliament as new whip, led from the front with 46 ball-59, laced with four fours and three sixes—an innings which steered the side to competitive 142-6 from a precarious 13-3.
Zimbabwe recruit Richard Ngarava then did the rest, claiming 4-28 to restrict Dhaka to 127-9.
Sylhet came to play this match with new set of jersey in a bid to mark the month of February, a month which is significant for Bangladesh people due to the language movement.
It seemed that the change of jersey also changed the fortune of Sylhet. But initially it looked all together a similar story as Sylhet tasted yet another top order collapse to be reduced to 13-3 after being put into bat first.
Dhaka’s pacer Shoriful Islam, who has been going through the form of his life, was the wrecker-in-chief as he took all three wickets in his first two overs. He removed ShamsurRahmanShuvo for a five-ball duck before extending Najmul
HossainShanto’s lean patch, rattling his stump for 3. In his next delivery he gave Zakir
Hasan a first-ball duck to stand on his second hat-trick in this BPL. However Mithun successfully negotiated his hat-trick delivery and started rebuilding job in astute fashion.
Mithun shared 57-run with Samit Patel, who made a run-a-ball-32 to repair the initial damage before going on berserk to keep the runs flowing. ArifulHaquegave the finishing touch with 9 ball-21,hitting three sixes. Ariful and Mithun took 22 runs in the penultimate over against the day’s best bowler Shoriful Islam and it made the eventual difference. Shoriful though took the revenge by dismissing Ariful but the damage was done by then.
Nagarava thereafter got into act, getting the better of Dhaka openers SaimAyub(13) and inform Naim Sheikh (2) to leave them at 19-2. Like Mithun, no one from Dhaka could make the repair job successfully as they lost wickets at regular intervals.
Fast bowler RejaurRahman Raja who took 2-41, gave Nagarava the support to slice Dhaka’s batting line up. However, Taskin Ahmed’s 11 ball-27 with six fourswas the other major contribution, which only reduced the margin of the defeat.
After this defeat, Dhaka now languished at bottom of the table with just one win from five matches. Sylhet’s first win in six matches boosted their run rate and helped them move one place up from the bottom.
