(AFP) Chittagong – In the third and final one-day international on Tuesday in Chittagong, Bangladesh overcame Afghanistan by seven wickets to escape a series sweep. Liton Das top-scored with 53 not out.
Shoriful Islam’s career-best 4-21 enabled the hosts to bowl out Afghanistan for 126 in 45.2 overs, allowing them to advance to 129-3 in 23.3 overs.
Tail-ender Azmatullah Omarzai, who scored 56 for Afghanistan and made his first ODI fifty, provided some late fight.
Fazalhaq Farooqi, a left-arm seamer, offered Afghanistan some hope when he dismissed Naim Sheikh for a duck and Najmul Hossain for 11.
For the third wicket, Liton and Shakib Al Hasan added 61 runs, stabilizing the innings and giving Bangladesh back the initiative.
After scoring 39 runs per ball, Shakib was dismissed by Mohammad Nabi, but Liton led Bangladesh to victory with a 60-ball innings that included three fours and two sixes.
Towhid Hridoy, who is just 22 years old, struck the winning boundary off Zia-ur-Rehman.
We suffered defeats in our first two games, so there will be victories and losses. In the most recent game, we attempted to demonstrate that we were the superior squad, said Bangladesh pacer Shoriful Islam.
It feels great. It was a wonderful performance since the whole squad backed me.
“Mentality was wrong”
Earlier, the foreigners won the toss and chose to bat first, but they were unable to begin their innings.
Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott commented, “The guys didn’t execute and they didn’t adjust to the conditions.”
After entering the game for the first time in this series, Shoriful struck quickly, removing Rahmat Shah for a duck in the third over and Ibrahim Zadran for one.
Rahmanullah Gurbaz, who had previously scored a career-high 145 runs, saw one catch fall into no man’s land but quickly top-edged Taskin Ahmed to go for six.
By catching Nabi leg-before, Shoriful added insult to injury for Afghanistan, leaving the visitors in peril at 15-4 after nine overs.
They made poor strokes, and today’s attitude prevented us from winning wickets, Trott said.
We never had a partnership, which is essential when starting over after going 15 or 20 innings for four runs.
The rot was stopped by Hashmatullah Shahidi and Najibullah Zadran, but Shakib ordered the latter back for 10 to prevent their collaboration from growing.
In order to terminate Taijul Islam’s patient innings of 22 off 54 balls, Shahidi tugged one off of him onto his stumps.
Omarzai assisted Afghanistan in surpassing the 100-run milestone after debutants Zia (five) and Abdul Rahman (four) left the game quickly.
He holed out a catch to Naim Sheikh at long-off off Taskin, who collected 2-23, and was the last man out.
Only England, the current world champions, and Afghanistan have won an ODI series in Bangladesh in the last seven years.
If they had won, they would have been the first team since Sri Lanka in 2014 to sweep an ODI series in Bangladesh.
Two T20 matches will follow the ODI series on July 14 and 16 at Sylhet, Bangladesh’s northeastern metropolis.