India, who won the toss and opted to bowl, gained the upper hand after pacemen Jaydev Unadkat and Vijay Shankar shared five wickets between them to restrict Bangladesh to 139-8. “I think it was a great performance, something that was expected from us. Right from the start to the end, it was clinical and a complete team effort,” India skipper Rohit Sharma said after the win. “Bowlers executed plans very well. We kept it simple and got the basics right, which was missing in the first game.”
Dhawan, whose 90 went in vain in India’s opening loss against hosts Sri Lanka on Tuesday, then made sure that his side cruise home, despite initially slumping to 40-2. Sharma faltered in his second successive outing after chopping a delivery onto his stumps from left-arm paceman Mustafizur Rahman. He made 17.
Dhawan, hitting 5 fours and 2 sixes en route to his sixth T20 fifty, and Suresh Raina, who made 28, put on a crucial 68-run third-wicket stand. Dhawan finally fell to Taskin Ahmed’s right-arm medium pace in the 17th over but Manish Pandey, 27 not out, carried the team home.
Earlier Bangladesh’s batting faltered with only Liton Das, who top-scored with 34 and Sabbir Rahman, who hit 30 off 26 balls, giving some respectability to the total. Unadkat claimed three wickets with his left-arm pace while Shankar, who took his first international wicket in Mushfiqur Rahim, returned figures of 2-32. “We didn’t bat well. We should have scored 30 more runs. We need to find out how to get runs on these kind of wickets,” said Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah. “One win will boost us and will reflect in our game. Hopefully we’ll get it.”
Bangladesh will next take on Sri Lanka in the third match of the tournament, which is timed to commemorate the host island’s 70 years of independence, tomorrow.
Scoreboard
Bangladesh innings
Tamim Iqbal c Unadkat b Thakur 15
S Sarkar c Chahal b Unadkat 14
Liton Das c Raina b Chahal 3 4
M Rahim c Karthik b Shankar 18
Mahmudullah c Thakur b Shankar 1
S Rahman c Karthik b Unadkat 30
M Hasan c Pandey b Unadkat 3
Taskin Ahmed not out 8
R Hossain run out (Raina/Thakur) 0
Mustafizur Rahman not out 1
Extras (lb2, w11, nb2) 15
Total (8 wickets, 20 overs) 139
Fall of wickets: 1-20 (Soumya), 2-35 (Tamim), 3-66 (Mushfiqur), 4-72 (Mahmudullah), 5-107 (Liton), 6-117 (Sabbir), 7-134 (Sabbir), 8-135 (Rubel)
Did not bat: Nazmul Islam
Bowling: Unadkat 4-0-38-3 (w4), Sundar 4-0-23-0 (w2), Thakur 4-0-25-1 (w2), Chahal 4-0-19-1, Shankar 4-0-32-2 (w3, nb2)
India innings (target 140)
R. Sharma b Mustafizur Rahman 17
S. Dhawan c Das b Taskin 55
R. Pant b Rubel Hossain 7
S. Raina c Hasan b Hossain 28
M. Pandey not out 27
D. Karthik not out 2
Extras (b1, lb1, w2) 4
Total (4 wickets, 18.4 overs) 140
Fall of wickets: 1-28 (Sharma), 2-40 (Pant), 3-108 (Raina), 4-123 (dhawan)
Did not bat: W. Sundar, V. Shankar, S. Thakur, J. Unadkat, Y. Chahal
Bowling: Mustafizur 4-0-31-1, Taskin 3-0-28-1, Rubel 3.4-0-24-2 (w1), Mehidy 4-0-21-0, Soumya 1-0-8-0 (w1), Mahmudullah 1-0-11-0, Nazmul 2-0-15-0
