Nasum, Liton power Bangladesh to outclass Afghanistan

Nasum Ahmed’s glimpse with the ball followed by Liton’s half-century helped Bangladesh to crush Afghanistan by 61 runs in the first T20 International at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.

The victory helped Bangladesh to go up 1-0 in the two-match series.

Liton Das firstly struck a 44 ball-60 to guide Bangladesh to a decent 155-8 and then Nasum caught the visitors in spin-web to finally skittle them out for 94 in 17.4 overs.

Nasum recorded his joint career-best 4-10 and was ably supported by Shakib Al Hasan, who grabbed 2-18 but those two wickets were crucial given the match scenario.

At one stage, Afghanistan were reduced to 20-4, courtesy to a Nasum blow, Afghanistan appeared to have recovered from the blow when Najibullah Zadran and captain Mohammad Nabi were batting together.

They showed an unwavering resolve to keep Afghans on track but Shakib in his consecutive two overs took out both of them to fully dismiss Afghanistan’s hope of winning the game.

Mustafizur Rahman removed Azmatullah Omarzai to finish with 1-19. Shoriful then took care of the lower order to help Bangladesh win the game by a big margin.

Shoriful however had the figures of 3-29 as he played around the spinners to make Afghanistan’s task tougher.

Liton Das struck a superb 44 ball-60 to lift Bangladesh earlier. Afif Hossain scored 25 and debutant Munim Shahriar added 17.

Farooqi and debutant Azmatullah Omarzai took two wickets for Afghanistan.

ARR