Sri Lanka stomp Bangladesh with ease to give their NRR a huge boost having won the game with 32 balls to spare.
Nissanka, Mishara and Sri Lanka bowlers trample Bangladesh in NRR-boosting win.
All indications led to the first close encounter of this Asia Cup after it began with four mismatches, as they were locked 8-8 in T20Is in the ten years prior to this match. But in the end, it was a bit of an anticlimax as Sri Lanka dismissed Bangladesh by six wickets with thirty-two balls left.
Sri Lanka gained two points and a significant increase in net run-rate, which was exactly what they needed given the high stakes of this group-of-death match. Bangladesh now has an uphill battle to make it to the Super Four after already drawing criticism for needing 17.4 overs to chase down 144 against Hong Kong.
Bangladesh only truly competed during an uninterrupted sixth-wicket stand of 86 between Shamim Hossain and Jaker Ali, as Sri Lanka dominated the game from its spectacular start—Nuwan Thushara and Dushmantha Chameera bowled back-to-back wicket maidens with the new ball—to its facile finish.
Bangladesh had some sort of total to bowl at because to that partnership, which started at 53 for 5. However, it soon appeared to be no total thanks to Kamil Mishara’s strength and Pathum Nissanka’s fluency. Mishara finished undefeated with 46 off 32 balls, while Nissanka became the fastest Sri Lankan hitter to reach 2000 T20I runs with 50 off 34 balls.
After deciding to bowl, Sri Lanka discovered new-ball swing, but that couldn’t have been the only factor contributing to Tanzid Hasan and Parvez Hossain Emon’s severe struggles. Before Thushara swung his sixth ball through his gate as he tried a get-out-of-jail drive on the up, Tanzid repeatedly failed to find the middle of the bat, or the gaps, in the first over (although two of the mishits were off full-tosses), indicating that the pitch was a little two-paced.
Although it lasted only four balls, Chameera and Emon’s second-over match was comparable. This time, the ball swung less than the batter had anticipated, and the on-the-up drive gave the keeper an outside edge. The scoreboard showed an incredible sight: 0 for 2 in two overs when Chameera finished the over with a pair of dots to No. 4 Towhid Hridoy.
Litton Das ensured that Sri Lanka wasn’t given the upper hand. Dasun Shanaka, their fifth bowler, attempted to slip in a quiet over, but Litton pursued him, edging his first delivery narrowly missing a diving fly slip, and struck him for three fours in the sixth over.
Wanindu Hasaranga, who had missed Sri Lanka’s recent tour to Zimbabwe due to a hamstring injury, entered the game in the eighth over and made an almost immediate effect, trapping Mahedi Hasan leg before wicket with his second ball, a signature wrong’un, so that did not indicate a change in momentum.
In the tenth over, Bangladesh’s sixth-wicket combination got together at 53 for 5, and they walked off together at the end of the innings with 40s they had not lost. The fact that both bowled at strike rates in the 120s and had trouble hitting the boundary for extended periods of time demonstrated the two-paced nature of this Abu Dhabi surface as well as the skill of Sri Lanka’s bowling, especially that of Chameera, whose yorkers attained an uncommon degree of accuracy in overs 18 and 20.
With a pick-up shot over midwicket off Matheesha Pathirana in the 19th over, Shamim hit the only six of Bangladesh’s innings. This shot, along with Pathirana’s figures of 0 for 42 in four overs, showed that batsmen could feed off pace on the ball in these circumstances.
Although Sri Lanka has historically set the standard for this format, both of these countries have faced well-documented problems in recent years with their T20I scoring rates. Furthermore, Mishara and Nissanka demonstrated that that spark might still last.
Nissanka hit what was unquestionably the best shot of the game up to that point—a massive pulled six off Mustafizur Rahman, deep in front of square—off the fourth ball of his innings. Additionally, Nissanka and Mishara kept hitting the boundaries in a manner that Bangladesh had found difficult to accomplish during their innings after Mustafizur responded by nicking off Kusal Mendis.
If Mahedi had held onto a chance at mid-on when Shoriful Islam got a short ball to get big on Mishara, all of this might not have happened. At that moment, he was batting on 1 off 7, and the surface was still appearing two-paced.
With Mishara hitting the unlucky Shoriful for 6, 4, 4 off the final three balls of the over, it appeared that the lost opportunity also changed the circumstances. No one else from either side could match Nissanka’s skill in timing the ball and manipulating length and line with a sashayed this way and that.