Cricket lovers will witness another intense battle between the top two cricketers of the country Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan when Fortune Barishal take on Rangpur Riders in the second qualifier of the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur today.
The winning side of today’s contest will join Comilla Victorians in the final of the 10th edition of the tournament on 1 March while the losing side will be knocked out of the competition.
Barishal came into the contest after they beat Chattogram Challengers by seven wickets in the eliminator while Rangpur suffered a six-wicket defeat to Comilla in the first qualifier and were forced to play Barishal in the second qualifier.
Rangpur face Barishal in a battle of many battlesThis will be the third time these two teams are facing each other in the ongoing meet.
Barishal beat Rangpur by five wickets in the first encounter while Rangpur took revenge for that defeat when they beat Barishal by only one wicket in a thrilling encounter in Chattogram.
The rivalry between Tamim and Shakib went to another level during the last meeting after the former came up with a celebration that was quite similar to Shakib, who did the same after removing him with his first delivery of that contest.
Apart from this battle, there is another fight likely to take place as Tamim is known to be a bunny of Afghanistan left-arm pace bowler Fazalhaq Farooqi in the recent past, who will feature for Rangpur when they take on Barishal in the knockout game.
Farooqi dismissed Tamim in each of the four ODIs that he played against him while Tamim could manage only 20 runs from 46 balls off the left-arm pacer.
These two cricketers are yet to face each other in a T20 contest.
“I think Farooqi will have some kind of advantage against Tamim but having said that, it all matters who delivers on the day,” Rangpur head coach Sohel Islam told The Daily Sun.
Meanwhile, Barishal head coach Mizanur Rahman Babul begs to differ with his counterpart in this regard.
“What Fazalhaq did with Tamim was two years back. Since then a lot of time has passed. So I don’t think it will be a big matter,” Mizanur told reporters when his attention was drawn to the duel between Farooqi and Tamim.
Mizanur, however, was not ready to talk too much about the psychological battle between the two senior campaigners Tamim and Shakib as he insisted that they wanted to enjoy their game more than anything else.
“We try to enjoy our game and that the Tamim-Shakib thing does not come into our mind. We want Tamim to play the best cricket and win the game for us,” said Mizanur.
Meanwhile, Rangpur head coach Sohel said that they are not losing sleep regarding the presence of three senior-most Bangladeshi national stars (Tamim, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah) in their opponent camp.
“We are not thinking too much about it (three seniors in the opponent camp),” said Sohel, adding that Shakib isn’t bothered about it.
“I don’t think Shakib is thinking too much about who is playing. Rather, all of us are focusing on executing our plans in the middle,” he concluded.
