Bangladesh lucky to share points: Mashrafe

Bangladesh escaped with a point against Australia in their second game of the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 after match was abandoned due to rain.

Defeat was staring Bangladesh in the face. Chasing a target of 183 runs, Australia had reached 83 for the loss of one wicket after 16 overs.

Four more overs needed to be played for a result to take place but Bangladesh slowed down the over-rate by bowling only pacers towards the end. After the shower, play was unable to continue and the umpires had to call the game off.

Australia would have been well ahead per the Duck-worth Luis rule had the game went on for another four overs.

Captain Mashrafe Mortaza commented after the game: “As I said earlier, Australia were unlucky today. On the other hand we got lucky to secure a point but now it’s important to utilize this scenario. At this moment I’m not quite sure whether we will go through if we win against New Zealand.

The game was totally in favour of the Australians and we got quite lucky,” the skipper added.

“We were not sure if the game was going to be stopped but we wanted to lengthen the time to get to 20 overs”, Mashrafe revealed.

All rounder Shakib Al Hasan also felt that Bangladesh were lucky to get a point and said: “Now our target is to win the next game against New Zealand. We got a bit lucky and the Australians were a bit unfortunate”.