When Shamim Hossain pulled Afghanistan’s debutant Wafadar Momand for a boundary through the midwicket area yesterday in Sylhet, it did more than just calm the nerves of the Bangladesh team, which had been shaken by their first-ever ODI series loss to the visitors in Chattogram just five days before.
Bangladesh, led by Shakib Al Hasan, won by six wickets thanks to a shot from Shamim. This was the Tigers’ first win in an international T20I series against Afghanistan.
Bangladesh won both games in the two-match series. This was only the second time in T20I history that they had won three straight series. Bangladesh beat the current world winners in this format, England, in a three-match series at home in March. They then beat Ireland 2-1 at home later that month, and their winning streak kept going until this series in Sylhet.
The Tigers have only been on such a roll in this format once before, in 2021, when they beat Zimbabwe 2-1 away from home and then beat Australia 4-1 and New Zealand 3-2 at home to boost their confidence before the T20 World Cup that year.
From a statistics point of view, the winning runs of then and now might look the same, or some might put the streak of 2021 ahead because it included the Aussies and the Kiwis, two of the biggest teams in the game. However, there is a big difference between the two streaks.
The T20I series wins over Australia, who won the 2021 T20 World Cup, and New Zealand on slow and low fields in Mirpur were called “historic.” But Bangladesh’s disastrous exit from the T20 World Cup in Oman and the UAE, where they lost all five of their games and didn’t win a single one in the main round, shows that they were fooled by their run of success.
But things are different this time. The T20 team, led by captain Shakib and coached by Chandika Hathurusingha, seems to be on the right track to change the country’s terrible T20 records. To keep going in the right direction, they need to do more of what they did against England, Ireland, and Afghanistan recently.
Bangladesh hasn’t done well in the smallest version of cricket before, but the Tigers beat a top T20 team like Afghanistan in both of their tries. It seems like they had a specific plan and way of going about it.
Not giving wickets to star leggie Rashid Khan and mystery spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman paid off in the first T20I, which was won by the young guns Towhid Hridoy, Shamim Hossain, and Shoriful Islam. Liton Das facing the bowlers in the Powerplay to give the Tigers a good start and help the run rate in the 17-over-a-side second T20I seemed to be part of a well-thought-out plan.
Bangladesh did have some shaky times during the series, like when Karim Janat got a hat-trick in the last over of the first game and when they struggled to keep up with the pace set by the openers in the second game. And those times of nervousness just show that there’s more room for improvement. But if they do things right, Bangladesh might be able to finally get stable in the simplest form of the game.