It was Powell's Day Today
F Waliullah

Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels, Ramnaresh Sarwan - they have all showed some of what they can do. But in the end, it was the hard hitting batsman Ricardo Powell's day. With the absence of two most experienced West Indian batsman captain Carl Hooper and Shivnarayan Chanderpaul, Powell has showed that he can take the responsibility of scoring some big innings against Bangladesh. It was him, who has shown where the weakness lies for Bangladeshi bowlers and fielders.

Bangladesh bowlers and fielders started well, but they were caught at the hands of the Windies batsman right at the end, when they hammered fifty runs off the last five overs. Otherwise, it was all Ashraful and Ashraful, until Powell started his big hitting.

Two Bangladeshi pacers Monjurul Islam and Tapash Baisya had failed to capitalize on the good seaming conditions under cloudy and overcast skies. The wicket was a sporting one that assists both medium pacers and spinners as well as it had huge amount of runs in it. When the sun came out for a while, Monjurul took the wicket of Wavell Hinds after exectution of a well-earned plan that actually worked for Bangladesh. Mohammad Rafique has always been a good spinner, and he was mixing up a lot of balls. Marlon Samuels was trying to get a boundary off him and was out to a wide ball. Chris Gayle was looking really out of sorts despite his recent good form in the India tour, and he was out run out - one example of how well Bangladesh fielded. During the middle of the innings, Naimur Rahman bowled an excellent spell who looked like the old Naimur - the player Naimur before he was the captain of the Bangladesh team.

Ramnaresh Sarwan was playing like a very experienced batsman, taking singles and not trying to hit every ball into the boundary - the type of game that forces Bangladeshi bowlers usually to try out different things and thus they give away too many runs in the process. But that too didn't happen today as Mohammad Ashraful came in and took his wicket. Later Ashraful also took the wicket of Ridley Jacobs, but his first wicket of Sarwan - it was a really classic dismissal. Alok Kapali took the wicket of Darren Ganga when he was playing some big shots which is unlike himself. Later Tapash Baisya took the wicket of Ricardo Powell after being hit by a six and a boundary.

Both the leg spinners bowled well at initial stages, but once they were started to hit for boundaries, they showed that they still lack the
experience for bowling the full quota of 10 overs. Although Khaled Mashud's weakness in captancy had some affect on Ashraful's bowling figures, but Ashraful showed that he has not yet developed into a specialist bowler like Naimur Rahman yet.

Then in the batting department, it was also Ashraful who stole the show. Because of some poor strokeplay shown by the South-Africa-returned batsman Hannan Sarkar, Al Shahriar and Habibul Bashar, Ashraful remains the best top order batsman of the day. Which was encouraging to see in his batting was that he got out trying to defending a ball rather than trying to hit a ball. One proof that he has started to be a little matured than he was earlier.Or could it be that Sanuar Hossain on the other end was helping him to calm him down?

Alok Kapali - the other leg spinner - all rounder on the other hand has showed that he is a lot matured with the bat than Ashraful and played splending along with the responsible Sanuar Hossain. They had particularly tried to punish the bad balls which Ashraful could not do. And Ashraful scored his 29 runs off just 25 balls! Can you imagine that?

With this match being abandoned due to rain in Chittagong, Bangladesh has ended its world record saga of losing the most number of one day international matches consecutively.

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