A-Team wobbles national's confidence

The National Squad going to take on the Zimbabweans on November this year, are given a jolt by their juniors in a one sided practice match held in BUET ground today. The Bangladesh-A defeated their opponents by a fair margin of 88 runs in this 50-over match.

Winning the toss the A-squad elected to bat first against their imposing rivals. Rafiqul Islam, the opener put on 47 runs in the first wicket stand with Mehrab at the other end. Tall fast medium Monir dispatched Mehrab (18) when he offered a catch to Akram Khan.

Tushar Imran, the guy came back after a month-long training session taken in Australia, joined Rafiqul to take the score to 98 before he got an edge to wicket keeper Anwar Hossain off Shabbir Khan. Tushar played as many balls to notch up his 21. When the board was displaying 122, Rafiqul was tempted by offie Shabbir to play down the wicket, which he missed and was stumped by Anwar. His swashbuckling 62 included 5 spectacular boundaries.

The fall of the next wicket brought a dismaying note among the crowd because they saw Ashraful, the hero in Colombo returning with a duck offering Shabbir Khan his third wicket. A handy 36 from Khaled Mahmood off 42 balls that included a six and Hasanuzzaman managing 52 off 75, gave the glimpse of a good total at the end.

Bangladesh-A, who lost their previous match against the same side, piled up 239 for 9 in their stipulated overs. Shabbir Khan, the lanky off-spinner captured 3 wickets giving away 26 runs in his economical spells. Hasibul Hussain and skipper Naimur Rahman grabbed two wickets each.

Javed Omar Belim, the right-handed dependable opener for the national team, was dismissed for 10 off Khaled Mahmood when Sajjad caught him at point. At the other end Hannan Sarkar batted with patience, as he was rather choosy in his selection of balls. He made 38 with a solitary boundary in it.

The star batsmen were departing as quickly as they could. Al-Sahariar, who proved good in the first match returned with 6 and Habibul Bashar, the Multan hero could only managed 11 before Bikash sent him on his stride. A line of failures came from renowned batsmen, who played their cards too poorly (Aminul Islam 18, Akram Khan 0 & Naimur Rahman 2) to bring off the result. They all were victims of Mohammed Rafique.

The ruled out left-arm off-spinner bowled brilliantly to get a haul of five wickets in his bag for 34 runs to make the difference. Thanks for Kowshik, Alamgir, Mahmood and Ashraful they all bowled cautiously keeping more attention on line and length and giving no rooms for the batsmen to go for shots.

The side was wrapped up for 152 all out with 58 balls still at hand. The incessant rain had revoked the four-day match between the sides a few days ago. Both sides were disappointed about not getting enough practice matches before their tours.

The Bangladesh-A team will head off for India on October 13, 2001 and Bangladesh National will play against Zimbabwe in November this year as the hosts.