Dailystarnews.com - Sports Reporter

Defending champions Moha-mmedan Sporting Club roared back in the title race whey they conquered their arch-rivals Abahani Krira Chakra by six wickets in the last first round match of the GrameenPhone Premier League at the Bangabandhu National Stadium yesterday.

The Mohammedan victory was fashioned by their captain Minhazul Abedin and Sanwar Hossain.

The two seasoned campaigners put on 109 runs for the undefeated fifth wicket as Mohammedan toppled a fighting Abahani total of 254 for six with 19 balls to spare.

With this win Mohammedan finished the first phase with 16 points, four points adrift of league leaders Victoria Sporting Club and two points behind second-placed Bangladesh Biman. The defeat, Abahani's fourth from 11 games, almost dashed their hopes of regaining the title that they lost to Mohammedan last season.

Sanwar returned to form with a polished 70 and Minhaz struck 53, his second successive half century, to swing the pendulum in Mohammedan's way in an absorbing contest where Abahani just could not sustain the pressure of the last ten overs.

"This win puts us firmly back on track. I'm happy that our batting finally clicked. I always felt that 250 was not a defending total on this batting wicket," said an elated Mohammedan captain Minhaz after the match.

His counterpart Akram Khan quite understandably came up with full of complaints.

"The umpiring was not up to the standard. If the foreign umpires are not better than the locals then what's the point of hiring them," questioned Akram bitterly.

The big right-hander who left the field after 17 overs because of running high temperature also blamed his bowlers for letting Moha-mmedan off the hook.

Mohammedan needed 57 runs from the last 60 deliveries. But the pressure eased off after right-arm seamer Anwar Hossain, returning in his second spell in the 42nd over, conceded 13 runs.

The match as a contest was over when Neeyamur Rashid, bowling his first over replacing Anwar, was clobbered for 12 runs.

Any contest of the two crowd-pulling sides hardly turns out to be purely an entertaining one because of the passion and tension involved in it. And yesterday's affair was also no exception. The game was stopped twice during the Mohammedan chase.

It all started when Minhaz asked for a runner straining his left hamstring after completing a sharp single in the 38th over. But Abahani's stand-in captain Naimur Rahman refused to allow an apparently pretentious Minhaz to have a fresh pair of legs. Naimur however resigned after fifteen minutes following a long argument with the Pakistani umpires, who were convinced that the wily right-hander needed a runner.

Opener Ehsanul Huq did another good job as a runner after scoring a solid 44.

The match stopped for the second time in the 45th over with Mohammedan only 24 runs away from victory. Some unsporting Abahani fans vented their frustra tion by hurling particles, apparently at the perfect acting of Minhaz, who showed little sign of pain while it came to scoring.

Minhaz executed a perfect reverse sweep the second ball he faced after playing with a runner to make Abahani supporters fume with suspicion.

Mohammedan started the chase the way it should be with in-form Ehsanul and Kenyan Steve Tikolo producing 54 runs for the third wicket after makeshift opener Sabbir Khan and Habibul Bashar fell cheaply.

Ehsanul looked confident to get his fifth fifty but paid the penalty for sweeping having exposed his leg stump. Leg-spinner Ali Arman bowled the right-hander with his first ball of the innings.

Tikolo also scored 46 before holing out at long off of the bowling of Anwar.

The departure of the Kenyan in the 32nd over with the score on 146 brought the best of Mohammedan as Minhaz joined Sanwar to take the match away from Abahani.

Abahani on the contrary faltered at this stage after their opener Mehrab Hossain set an ideal launching pad with his season-best knock of 80.

The dashing right-hander, who failed to score a fifty in his last eight games, clicked in the crucial match to help Abahani score 149 for two in 28.4 overs. He was out caught at the long-on boundary by Taposh. Mehrab struck seven boundaries and two sixes off successive deliveries of Minhazul over long on.

He shared 102 runs for the second wicket with Moniruzzaman, who scored a disciplined 53 off 60 balls.

But Abahani failed to accelerate the run-rate after the two set batsmen were out in quick succession.

Although skipper Akram Khan continued to be consistent with an unbeaten 48 off 59 balls, but there was a little support at the other end after Naimur Rahman and Neeyamur Rashid departed cheaply.

Abahani badly missed their Pakistani left-arm spinner Mohammad Hossain, who left Dhaka last week to play for minor English County.