Banglawash on cards

With heavy clouds hovering in the sky, some players had been kicking a football around indolently. The atmosphere suddenly became vibrant as captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza entered the fray. He shouted and made fun in every possible way. This scene was how Bangladesh's practice began yesterday at Mirpur ahead of the third and final ODI against India today.

Mashrafe's prowess to inspire has already become the stuff of legends, so 16 crore people will look forward to seeing the man from Narail inspire his team once more to create yet another piece of history at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, by inflicting a 3-0 whitewash on their mighty next-door neighbours.

Under pressure India skipper MS Dhoni, along with his teammates, came for practice at the same time as Bangladesh. As Dhoni walked by the Tigers, he had a brief encounter with Sabbir Rahman and Mahmudullah Riyad, who is out with an injury. Though they exchanged pleasantries and smiles, when the match begins today, there will be no smiles until a winner emerges.

Bangladesh have already clinched the series by winning the first two games quite convincingly, but they will definitely want to continue with their attacking brand of cricket to capitalise on their chance, while India will seek to salvage some pride from the final game before returning home. So, in no way can this match can be labelled a dead-rubber.

And that's the reason why everybody will hope that rain will not play spoilsport in the final game, though the weather forecast is not encouraging till the reserve day.

Winning one match was the pre-series notion, but the reality for the Tigers now is that they want to pull off another surprise for world cricket fraternity to inflict their famous "Banglawash" on India, just after achieving the feat against India's perennial rivals Pakistan in the previous series.

Bangladesh had easy sails over their opponents in the first two games, but coach Chandika Hathurusingha and skipper Mashrafe still said that they were not at their best in the first two games. They rated the performances against Pakistan more highly.

The dissatisfaction was there mainly because of their batting. The thinking in the team was that the batting lacked the consistency and power that they had showed against a strong Pakistan bowling attack. Shakib Al Hasan's consecutive half-centuries might not get enough attention in the face of Mustafizur Rahman's magical bowling success, but the left-hander's true professional knocks saved the team in both matches.

So, Bangladesh will be looking forward to a much better batting performance on their way to creating more history.

The bowling has been stupendous so far as the four-pronged pace attack has gotten brilliant support from the slow bowlers. Another such performance would make sure that the vaunted Indian batting line-up will have no answer against them in the series, but the bad news was that Bangladesh might have to break the winning combination as pacer Taskin Ahmed suffered a side strain, which forced the team management to include leg-spinner Jubair Hossain in the squad.

This series so far has provided enough surprises for India; can Bangladesh pull off another surprise in the final game?