WI beat Bangladesh by 5 wickets and conceded the T20 series 2-0 at Guayana. Nicholas Pooran was adjudged Man of the Match for his blistering 74 runs (not out) and steered his team home with 10 balls spare.
After winning the toss, Bangladesh elected to bat first and took 7 runs per over. Anamul Haque who got the opportunity after a long interval failed to utilize another opportunity. He fell pretty cheaply scoring 10 off 11 balls to Oden Smith.
According to the Sportnews BD experts, this could be the end for Anamul Haque in International T20s.
After Anamul’s departure, Shakib al Hasan came in and started with a boundary. He looked pretty confident while playing for the first boundary. He couldn’t score big and perished only for five runs.
Afif Hossain who came to the crease at number four tried to build a partnership with Litton Das and succeeded. The Liton-Afif pair have so far scored 30 off 26 balls. Bangladesh scored 72 runs for 2 wickets in the middle of the innings.
This duo crossed 50 runs partnership when they charged Oden Smith in the 12th over. They took 20 runs in that over. However, Litton had to return 49 runs from 41 balls while trying to play a shot outside of the stumps and caught at the backward point.
Despite losing Litton’s wicket Bangladesh was looking to post a score beyond 170. But Mahmudullah’s slow knock in this power-hitting format raised the question again whether he should be dropped from the T20s.
In the 19th over, Walsh trapped the skipper and Afif Hossain was run out on 50 runs. This was his second fifty in this format. Finally, Bangladesh gave WI a target of 164 runs.
Chasing 164, WI lost an early wicket in the first over. Nasum gave a great start to Bangladesh that was expected.
After Nasum, Mehedi Hasan hit another wicket. But opener Kyle Mayers kept his nerve cool for a few overs.
When opener Kyle Mayers blasted his first six off Nasum Ahmed over long-off, the game was pretty much as good as won. He teamed up with Nicholas Pooran to take the score to 128/4 in the 15th over, with a partnership of 85.
With Mayers gone in the 15th over, Pooran took on Nasum and sent two balls sailing out of the park. This caused the 15th over to run up a bill of 19 runs.
Pooran ended up being the star of the show, blasting 74 runs off 39 balls, including five sixes in the process. This knock was enough to take his team to victory and finish off the series in style.