To begin with, Bangladesh didn’t start positively. Slow scoring rate and wickets at regular intervals made their innings a bit sluggish.
The left-handed opener Naeem didn’t contribute much and was sent to the pavilion in the over of the match Fazalhaq Farooqi. Munim Shahriar, the debutant, scored 17 off 18 balls but couldn’t handle the googly by Rashid Khan.
Liton Das, again, shined with the bat and scored significant 60 runs off 44 balls. In his innings, the batsman hit 4 fours and two maximums. Shakib and Mahmudullah struggled in their innings and fell early leaving the Bangladesh 80 for 4 in the 12th over.
Except Afif Hossain’s 25 off 24, no other middle lower order batsmen touched the double digit score. However, what did more damage to Afghanistan was their lack of discipline in bowling. They conceded 16 extra runs which are never acceptable at a global level competition.
Rashid Khan bowled exceptionally well as he always does in T20 matches. He picked a crucial wicket of the opener and conceded only 15 runs in 4 given overs.
Next to him, Fazalhaq Farooqi bowled well and bagged 2 wickets and gave 27 runs in 4 given overs. Nabi and Mujeeb didn’t find their luck in the wicket column.
Afghanistan had a disastrous start. Both openers were back in the pavilion within three overs and the team was left in a struggling phase. Darwish Rasooli, the new number 3rd, couldn’t make anything better and was bowled by Nasum Ahmed in the third over.
Afghanistan was at 4 for 20 in the 5th over with the wicket of Karim Jannat. Thereafter, Bangladesh had total control over the game and didn’t give any chance to visitors to make a comeback.
For Bangladesh, every bowler made contributions in attack to defend the score of 155 runs. Due to their effort, Afghanistan failed to touch the 100 run mark and were all out at 94 runs. Naseem Ahmad gave 10 runs and bagged four wickets.