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Before the day had begun, the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka ICC World Cup match at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium had been hogging the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
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Both teams opted to skip their training sessions and some were seen sporting face masks; not because of a sudden rise of COVID cases but due to alarming levels of air pollution that is an annual occurrence in this part of the country around this time of the year.The match would eventually go ahead as planned despite concerns, with both sets of players as well as match officials and the handful of supporters having little choice but to brave hazardous conditions.
The two sides have shared a rivalry that has only grown fiercer in recent years, and the latest meeting between the two nations separated by the Bay of Bengal turned out to be another close affair.
Bangladesh would end up defeating Sri Lanka by three wickets to register only their second win of the ongoing World Cup, and snap their winless run against the Lankans at the showpiece event. A victory that came exactly a month after they got their campaign off to a winning start against Afghanistan. They had lost six games on the trot since then and had become the first team to be eliminated from semi-final contention, but now have the chance to end things on a high.
Sri Lanka had been only mathematically alive in the race to the semis heading into this match. The three-wicket loss in Delhi however, ensured they join Bangladesh and defending champions England among the teams flying back home ahead of the knockouts. It also gave Bangladesh the edge over Sri Lanka in terms of finishing within the top eight, which is the criteria set by the ICC for qualifying for the 2025 Champions Trophy in Pakistan.
Towards the end of the day, the game would not only enter the history books for one standout moment. A moment that would lead to a falling out between two senior players and would result in a major breakdown in cricketing relations between the two subcontinental neighbours.
We are of course referring to the once-in-a-lifetime dismissal that took place in the 25th over of the Sri Lankan innings in which senior all-rounder Angelo Mathews became the first cricketer in the history of international cricket to be timed out. All thanks to the strap of his helmet that came off just when he was about to take strike, which forced Mathews to signal for a spare helmet, with Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan noticing the time delay and opting to go for the appeal.
Sure enough, there was a war of words between Mathews and Shakib after the match, and the incident might have further intensified the rivalry between the two sides that until now had been defined by a unique celebratory dance move for the most part.
However, there still was a match to be won. Mathews’ dismissal had Sri Lanka reeling at 135/5 and Sri Lanka were in danger of getting shot out in the range of 200 when middle-order batter Charith Asalanka came to their rescue with a fighting 108, his second one-day ton. The Lankans managed to post a relatively competitive total of 279 thanks to his effort to give their bowlers some cushion.
Shakib aces trial by fire
Shakib knew he would have a target on his back due to his call earlier in the day, and that members of the opposition, especially senior-most member Mathews, would do everything in their power to make his stay at the crease as uncomfortable as possible.
That the Bangladesh skipper found himself at the crease as early as the seventh over with both openers back in the hut further complicated the matter for him, and made the chase all the more challenging. The star all-rounder’s stay at the crease was nervy initially, nearly getting caught at midwicket off a mistimed pull in his second delivery.
Read: Mathews slams Bangladesh after timed-out dismissal
Mathews would have been itching to have a go at Shakib, and he would get the ball in his hand in the first over after the powerplay. And he nearly ended up bagging Shakib’s wicket in his third delivery of the day, with the southpaw chipping the ball towards cover where Asalanka, Sri Lanka’s hero with the bat, ended up spilling the chance.
At this level, and especially against tried-and-tested match-winners, a drop like that could prove really costly and can often turn out to be the difference between a victory and a defeat. Bangladesh could have been reduced to 58/3 in their chase which not only would have fired up the Sri Lankans even further but would have made it all the more difficult for Najmul Hossain Shanto as far as building partnerships was concerned.
Shakib had pulled Dushmantha Chameera for a boundary off a short ball earlier in his innings and would do one better right after the dropped chance, hooking the same bowler over the fine leg for his first maximum of the innings. Two deliveries later in the same over, he would collect a streaky boundary off a thick leading edge.
The boundaries appeared to have had a calming effect on Shakib as well as his partner and signalled a shift in momentum and the start of a partnership that would eventually turn out to be the match-winning one.
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The Kotla pitch, after all, is one of the best batting surfaces among the venues in this World Cup. All that was needed from Shakib was to weather the storm early in his knock and then construct a knock where he struck at over 100. The 36-year-old kept boundaries coming in at regular intervals to maintain the chokehold on the opposition and allow Shanto — whose form and confidence had taken a hit after six consecutive single-digit scores — to score at a steady pace.
Shakib would later smash pacer Kasun Rajitha for a six over fine leg followed by a couple of boundaries down the ground in a 19-run over as Bangladesh crossed the 200-run barrier in just 30 overs, needing just 74 more to win in 120 deliveries with eight wickets in hand. Shakib would depart soon after for a well-constructed 82 off 65, missing out on a match-winning ton, but had done the job that was expected of him with his 169-run third-wicket stand with Shanto — putting his team on the path to victory after a nervy start.
With the two wickets that he had grabbed earlier in the day for 57 runs, including that of the in-form Samarawickrama, it was the perfect day in office for him except for the controversy.
“We had to bat deep. Luckily we got a big partnership. Shanto and I applied ourselves really well. We would have loved to finish early – with lesser wickets [lost] – but a win is a win,” Shakib said after the win.
Bangladesh should have gone over the line in a canter in the end; instead, they managed to throw a bunch of wickets away and make the game a whole lot more interesting by leaving the task of hitting the winning runs to the lower order. It was another Sakib — Tanzim Hasan — would would be at the heart of the winning moment. And it was even more fitting for the Bangladeshis that the winning runs, four leg byes, came off Mathews’ bowling.
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