Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka: Shoriful Islam and Kusal Mendis engage in a heated exchange of words in the third ODI

Bangladesh’s Shoriful Islam and Sri Lanka’s Kusal Mendis were involved in a heated moment during the third ODI on Friday, May 28 at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur. In the last ball of the 17th over, Shoriful bowled an off-cutter, but Mendis couldn’t make a connection and got beaten.

Thereafter, the young Shoriful tried to get under the Lanka vice-captain’s skin. The left-arm pacer went up to Mendis and seemed to have hurled some stern words. Mendis didn’t die wondering and he breathed fire as well. However, the situation came into control, and play resumed soon after.

Overall, Shoriful didn’t quite have a great game as he was the most expensive among the fast bowlers. Though he got the wicket of opposition skipper Kusal Perera, he leaked runs at an economy of seven and went for 18 runs in his last over. Mendis couldn’t impress either as he scored 22 off 36.

Here’s the video of Shoriful Islam and Kusal Mendis’ altercation: 

#BANvSL pic.twitter.com/Ot3MliAiPl

— The sports 360 (@Thesports3601) May 28, 2021

The Tigers won the series but lost the final match by 97 runs. Their fielders dropped Perera, who scored a century, as many as three times, and Tamim Iqbal, their skipper, rued the missed chances.

“As I said at the end of the last game, we have won the series but I never felt that we played the complete game. Never played to our potential. Lucky that we are on the winning side but there are many areas that we need to seriously work on,” Tamim said.

“When the opportunity came, we didn’t take our catches. If we had taken those, could have been maybe 30 runs lesser. (Overdependency on seniors) Maybe it is a concern. But I’m someone who always stands with the youngsters because I don’t think they aren’t trying,” he added.

Mushfiqur Rahim, the leading run-scorer and the Player of the Series reckoned the victory was much-needed for the Tigers after a few shoddy performances.

“The boys worked really hard for the series. Last few months we haven’t played our best cricket but we executed our plans well in the first two games of this series. Sri Lanka aren’t an easy side to score against, they like to come hard against us, they never give up,” Mushfiqur said.