UNB, Dhaka :
Bangladesh lost quick wickets in reply to Pakistan’s first innings total of 300 in the Dhaka Test on Tuesday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
With only three wickets in hand, Bangladesh are trailing by 224 runs. The play of the last day is scheduled to start half an hour early than the regular time.
Pakistan declared their first innings on 300 for four in 98.3 overs with Azhar Ali, Babar Azam, Fawad Alam and Mohammad Rizwan hitting a fifty each.
For Bangladesh, Taijul Islam took two wickets and Khaled Ahmed and Ebadot Hossain scalped one wicket each.
After day 3 was washed away by persistent rain, the game was resumed at 10:50am on Tuesday— the fourth day of the Test.
Khaled and Ebadot removed Babar and Azhar in the first session. They were unbeaten due to the rain for more than a day.
Pakistan’s first innings ended after the lunch break of day four after Fawad and Rizwan added more than a hundred runs on the board in the fifth wicket stand.
Bangladesh failed to make a good start as debutant Mahmudul Hasan Joy fell for a duck as the first batter of the hosts. The other opener, Shadman Islam, posted only three on the board.
Bangladesh lost five wickets before posting 50 runs with the spinner Sajid Khan taking six wickets out of seven— the other one was trapped run-out.
It was a pathetic cricket show by the hosts to end day four at seven for 76 in 26 overs.
After the quick fall of the openers, the onus was on the batters like Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das to keep the scoreboard moving, but they failed in a shocking way, to say the least.
Bangladesh were going down like a lead balloon when Mominul was trapped run-out for one, and Mushfiqur played a needless shot to only get caught to Fawad at the mid-wicket area. This shot from Mushfiqur can only be described as an example of brainfade. Trapping Mehidy Hasan lbw, Sajid completed his first five-for in Tests.
The day was called off early due to the bad light— a never-ending problem of this Test as the first day was also called off early due to the bad light, the second day had only 6.2 overs of cricket due to the rain, and the third was completely washed away for the same.
