BPL 2017, Match 37 Review: Nasir Hossain’s five-for crushes Chittagong Vikings

Sunday’s first game in the Bangladesh Premier League didn’t prove to be a thrilling one for the spectators as Sylhet Sixers ran riot over Chittagong Vikings to beat them by 10 wickets in what was a completely one-sided encounter.

Since Chittagong were already out of the tournament, this result won’t affect their aspirations much, but for Sylhet this was a very important result as by virtue of this, they have managed to keep themselves in contention for a playoff spot

Sylhet’s playoff chances are however still slim. They are depending on the possibility that they win their remaining one game and then some of the other results go their way, but one real positive for them is that since they beat Chittagong by a whopping margin, they upped their net run rate quite a bit which might help them sneak through if it comes to a situation where two or three teams are tied at the same no. of points.

Nasir Hossain wreaked havoc with the ball

Coming back to today’s game, Sylhet won the toss and invited the opposition to bat first precisely with the view of getting them out cheaply and chasing the target down as early as possible to get the net run rate up and the skipper Nasir Hossain himself led from the front with the ball.

The off spinner opened the bowling and just ran through Chittagong’s top order which had a couple of really good players in the form of Luke Ronchi and Soumya Sarkar. Hossain bowled his full quota of overs in his first spell itself and took 5 out of the first 6 wickets that fell in the Chittagong’s innings.

Chittagong’s innings never quite found the momentum because of the continuous fall of wickets and the team ended up getting bundled out for an embarrassing total of 67 runs. Only three batsmen managed to get into double digits with Irfan Sukkur being the top scorer with 15.

Sylhet made the mockery of the chase

Chasing that sort of tiny target was never going to be challenging for the accomplished bating line-up of Sylhet and they completed the job as clinically as they could have with the openers wiping off the target in no time to make sure their team add two more points to their tally and remain alive in the tournament.

Hossain for his five-for was rightfully named the Man of the Match.

Brief Scores

Chittagong Vikings: 67 all out in 12 overs (Irfann Sukkur 15, Luis Reece 12, Nasir Hossain 31/5 in 4 overs)

Sylhet Sixers: 68/0 in 11.1 overs (Mohammad Rizwan 36 not out, Andre Fletcher 32 not out)

Man of the Match: Nasir Hossain