Mithun leads Sylhet Strikers to drought-ending first win in BPL 2024
The wicketkeeper-batter regained his batting form and struck a half-century in the 15-run victory.
Mohammad Mithun led from the front and guided Sylhet Strikers to a resounding first victory of the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) 2024. An out-of-form Durdanto Dhaka squandered the early upper hand to slump to their fourth straight defeat in the tournament.
Mithun was named the Sylhet skipper after regular captain Mashrafe Mortaza took a break from the tournament for political work. He had been struggling with the ball as well.
The wicketkeeper-batter regained his batting form and struck a half-century in the 15-run victory.
Sylhet players wore special green jerseys on Friday to commemorate the International Mother Language Day, to be observed later on 21 February. The players' names and numbers in the shirts were written in Bengali.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Dhaka were all over Sylhet with Shoriful Islam making the top-order batters dance to his tunes in helpful conditions in the hazy Sylhet. The left-arm seamer swung the new ball both ways and limited Sylhet to 13-3 in the fourth over.
Mithun, who got out on single-digit scores in all of Sylhet's last three matches, moved out of the opening position and batted at number five and also had Samit Patel bat at three.
Both the tactical moves worked as Sylhet had a fruitful second half of the first innings, scoring 87 runs between the 11th and 20th over.
Patel made a run-a-ball 32 while Mithun's 59 off 46 balls had four fours and three sixes. Mithun, before getting out in the final over, propelled his team to a total which would prove match-winning later.
Shoriful picked up four wickets for 24 runs.
Dhaka never looked like going close to the target of 143. Quite a few of their batters got starts but could not convert them because of Sylhet's tight bowling.
Mithun managed his bowlers really well and they made 143 a mountain to climb for Dhaka. Nayeem Hasan and Samit Patel were hard to go after while the pacers used a lot of off-pace deliveries to deny the Dhaka batters.
Left-arm seamer Richard Ngarava's (4/30) spell trumped the one bowled by Shoriful earlier in the match.
Taskin Ahmed (27* off 11) hit some lusty blows towards the end to give the Dhaka fans something to cheer about.
The southpaw who bowls right-arm pace struck three boundaries in the wayward final over bowled by Rejaur Rahman Raja but he had too much work to do in the final over.
