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Pak beat Bangladesh by four wickets

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In the only insignificant match of the day, Pakistan kept their winning habit by defeating Bangladesh by four wickets. Bangladesh managed to make Pakistan work hard with the ball and the bat by putting on a decent show. However they completely messed up the brilliant 49-ball 71 from debutant Junaid Siddique with a weak finish in their innings.

Put into bat first by Pakistan, Bangladesh were bowled out for 140 in 19.4 overs. They did spring in a surprise at the top through 19-year-old left handed Junaid Siddique who showed no respect to Mohammad Asif and Sohail Tanvir. Junaid though didn’t quite get the support from any of his team members and Pakistan just kept on chipping away at the wickets. The left handed opener fell in the 15th over scoring 71 out of the 112 runs that his team had scored by then! His innings had 6 fours and 3 sixes. The next highest scorer for Bangladesh was Aftab Ahmed with 15 which showed that the Bangladeshi innings was a completely one-man show. Junaid was later declared as the Man of the Match.

Pakistan experimented with their batting order by drafting in Shahid Afridi to open the innings with Imran Nazir. In the third ball of the innings, Imran Nazir had decided to retire hurt after getting hit on his box trying to pull a Mortaza delivery. Afridi continued with Hafeez to raise the fifty up in quick time. Rasel and Razzak combined to put the brakes by removing Hafeez (23 from 21) and Afridi (39 from 15 with 5 fours and 2 sixes) in the space of seven deliveries. Pakistan did kept on losing wickets but always had the match under control. Imran Nazir returned back with Pak losing Misbah-ul-Haq at 106 for 5 to finish the match with an unbeaten 27 with three fours and a six. Pakistan won with a full over to spare. They were made to work really hard for their runs because of the two left arm spinners – Abdul Razzak and Shakib Al Hasan who gave around 4.00 runs per over in their respective quotas. Razzak had a much better looking figures than Shakib as he got two wickets that of Afridi and Younis Khan as well.