Twitter Reactions: Tamim Iqbal fights a lone battle against Australia at The Oval

If I say Tamim Iqbal pulled the entire Bangladesh batting on his back wouldn’t be an overstatement. He walked out to open the innings for his team and saw 6 of his teammates leave him alone at the crease as he toiled hard in the middle to give the team some substantiality in the inning. Mashrafe Mortaza won the toss and decided to bat first.

There was a forecast for rain but they wanted to put up a score on the board. The plan didn’t come off as well as they would have liked. Soumya Sarkar added just 3 runs to the total, Imrul Kayes’ contribution was 6, Mushfiqur Rahim scored 9 runs and things looked gloomy for the Bangladeshi side.

Till the point, he was there defying the Australian bowling attack the team had hopes of posting a defendable total. He hammered the ball from the pacers to the boundary and wasn’t deterred by Australia’s pace spearhead Mitchell Starc. In the middle part of his knock, he had to be patient as the runs weren’t coming easy and wickets were falling.

He kept rotating the strike to ensure the scoreboard was moving. Tamim broke the shackles in the 23rd over from Moises Henriques hitting him for a six and a couple of boundaries but the other Aussies bowlers kept things really tight. He got to his half century in 70 balls with the help of five fours and a six.

The left-hander enjoyed bowling against Travis Head and hit him for a couple of maximums in the 30th over, he kept going and was the major force that pushed Bangladesh’s total towards or beyond 200. He played a one-legged whip against Mitchell Starc in the 43rd over to get a maximum but top edged it and was caught safely by the long leg fielder Josh Hazlewood.

He missed out on the second consecutive century in Champions Trophy 2017 by just 5 runs as Bangladesh now reeled at 181/7. They could add just one more run to the total as Starc ran through the tail bowling fast and full at the stumps.

Here is how Twitter reacted to Tamim’s ‘One Man Army’ knock