Yesterday marked the beginning of a new era in Bangladeshi cricket history as Fargana Hoque Pinky became the first Bangladeshi women cricketer to make a century in one-day international competition.
Pinky is much like any other athlete in that she has always had the goal of being the first athlete in her country to break a record. In spite of this, the right-handed batter was given an additional motivation by her captain, Nigar Sultana Joty, to perform well in the crucial match against India, in which she was promoted up in the batting order and given the responsibility of opening the innings.
“The person who sits next to me, Nigar Sultana Joty, has always said to me, ‘I will make the century first.'” It was something I constantly heard. I never answered. My standard response was always, “Ok, you will do it.” Pinky grinned as she stated this while Joty also had a smile on her face at the time. “So, 70 to 80 percent of the credit goes to her for my hundred because I wanted to show her that I would make it first,” Pinky added as Joty was also grinning at the time.
Pinky went on to say that the rest of her team believed that they could always count on her to be the one to arrive at the destination first. Her previous highest score in one-day international competition was 71, which she achieved against Pakistan in Hamilton in 2022. Prior to her 56th ODI, she had already recorded nine scores in the 50s.
“I never scored [an international] hundred before, but recently saw Mushfiq bhai (Mushfiqur Rahim) and Shanto bhai (Najmul Hossain) scoring two hundreds; however, I scored a hundred in domestic cricket,” she said.
We have four or five guys who are capable of playing huge knocks, so the objective was for me to bat for a long time. I always had trust in my talent. When you put in a strong performance against a strong opponent, it will give you confidence for the future.