This was the fifth match of the tournaments and both the teams had nothing to lose as they were out of the finals . Only thing left to play was the the PRIDE. Pakistan made 4 changes to their side . Difficult to rememeber the names . As a matter of fact, even Boom Boom forgot the name of the replacements . How Pathetic !! Bangladesh made the best change ever possible , they dropped CrashaFool, whose brainfreeze never melts. Afridi won the toss and elected to bat without hesitating because the lighting is poor at Dambulla. Indians haven't complained about the lights yet as they havent lost a match yet . So, Pakistan were off to a blazing start with a quick fire 50(38) by S.Hasan. Farhat played patiently and notched a half century to his credit . Malik,Amin and Shafiq got out quickly without doing any damage . Enter U.Akmal & Boom Boom, Bangladesh's fielders were made mere spectators . Afridi terrorized the bowling attack .The ball went screaming to the boundaries . Akmal supported him excellently from the other end . Afridi got his first 50 in 35 balls and his next 50 in just 18 balls ! Uuh that must have hurt the Bangla Tigers . He broke Jayasuriya's world record of 270 6's in ODI . While Jaya took 440+ matches , Afridi broke it in just 295 . His knock definitely demoralized the Bangladeshis . He departed after scoring 124(60). Cameos by Razzaq and Kamran at the end propelled the score to 385.Terrific hitting ain't it ? Tamim and Kayes took strike for Bangladesh and Tamim,as usual BANG BANG BANG OUT!. Scored 34(27) and got out . Kayes and Siddique put on a P'ship which should be awarded the "THE BEST TEST PARTNERSHIP IN AN ODI". They never showed any intent of chasing down the score . They were happy rotating the singles , defending the balls . They seemed to be on a mission " COME WHAT MAY , WE ARE NOT GIVING OUR WICKETS AWAY!" and it was a perfect execution. They were so much keen on not losing wickets that they even forgot to score . Imrul Kayes scored a boring 66(110) . Siddique , never deserved a century and rightly so, got out on 97(114).Even after that , no batsman showed an intent to reduce the margin of victory . They managed to score 47 of the last overs .Not to forget Pakistan's sloppy fielding , dropped chances and missed run outs . According to Bangla, they had successfully drawn the test , but then reality is that Pakistan won by 139 runs . MOM was undoubtedly Shahid Bhai for his blitzkrieg . Right then, Pakistan however finished on III place . The next match is a rehearsal for the finals . India play Lanka in the last league match and then meet them again at the finals . Wonder, if they arent bored playing against each other for atleast half an year , every single year. :)
Match Summary
Pakistan 385/7
Afridi 124 Shafiul 3/95
Hasan 66
Bangladesh 246/5
Siddique 98 Akthar 1/22
Kayes 66
Pakistan bt Bangladesh by 139 runs.
