DHAKA, June 8, 2019 (BSS) – Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza finally claimed a wicket against England as he removed opener Johny Bairstow to break the dangerous opening partnership in their third match of the ICC Cricket World Cup at the Cardiff on Saturday.
It was his first wicket in five matches as he went wicket-less four straight games, starting from Tri-nation series in Ireland in which Bangladesh became unbeaten champions.
As Bairstow and his fellow opening partner Jason Roy got going strong, having taken Bangladeshi attack in disdain, Mashrafe gave Bangladesh a sigh of relief, undoing Bairstow with a delivery that carried extra bounce.
Bairstow on 51 tried to nudge it to leg-side but the ball popped up to short cover where Mehidy Hasan Miraz held on excellently to send him to the dressing room. By then Bairstow and Roy combined for a 128 in just 19.1 overs and Bairstow completed his first World Cup half-century.
However, when the breakthrough gave Bangladesh a relief to some extent, it was also a huge sigh of relief for Mashrafe after his performance was severely criticized.
Mashrafe last got wickets against West Indies at Malahide in Dublin in the group phase of tri-series, after ending the match with 3-60.
Thereafter he didn’t snap up any wicket in the return-leg match against Ireland in which he finished with 8-0-47-0 and in the final against West Indies with figures of 6-0-28-0.
He also went wicket-less in the first two matches of the World Cup against South Africa and New Zealand, finishing with 6-0-49-0 and 5-0-32-0 respectively.
In between Bangladesh played a practice game against India, where his bowling figure was 6-2-23-0. If the practice match is taken into consideration, he was wicket-less in five straight matches.
However it was the only second time in his career that he remained wicket-less in four straight international games, having suffered such sort of run of poor form in 2010 earlier.