Mahmudullah Riyadh produced an all-round effort to guideBangladesh to a comprehensive 51-run win against United Arab Emirates, as the host opened their account in the Asia Cup T20 tournament in Mirpur on Friday. Batting first, Bangladesh managed only 133 for eight largely due to rearguard action from Man-of-the-Match Mahmudullah, who scored a quickfire 36 off 27 balls with the help of a boundary and two sixes. However UAE's batting faltered once again as they produced a below-par effort to get bowled out for 82 in only 17.4 overs. Mahmudullah took 2/5 along with a brilliant catch to make it a memorable outing for him. Skipper Mashrafe Mortaza (2/12), left-arm seamer Mustafizur Rahaman (2/13 in 4 overs), Shakib Al Hasan (2/20) and Al-Amin Hossain (1/8) were also amongst wickets. It was a day where Mahmudullah showed his all-round skills taking a smart diving catch at gully to dismiss Shaiman Anwar off Mortaza's bowling.
Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar heaped praise on veteran seamer Ashish Nehra, saying he's a crafty bowler who has proved that "age is just a number".
On a pitch that offered the spinners a lot of assistance, Amit Mishra made sure he focussed on bowling in the right areas and reaped rich reward, finishing with excellent figures of one for 22 in four overs, including a maiden.
India skipper Ishan Kishan blamed poor fielding for his team's defeat in the final of the Under-19 World Cup against the West Indies.
England captain Stuart Broad is confident he will play a "full part" in his side's World Twenty20 campaign in Bangladesh despite suffering from a knee injury.
Having already secured their place in the final with three back-to-back wins, India are set to field their benched players against minnows United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their final league encounter of the Asia Cup T20 tournament, in Mirpur, on Thursday.
Rajneesh Gupta throws up all the numbers of how both teams have fared in Twenty20 Internationals.
The rain-hit opening Test between Bangladesh and South Africa in Chittagong petered out to a tame draw after the fifth and final day's play was called off without a ball being bowled on Saturday.
Virat Kohli is the sixth Indian batsman to register a hundred in his 50th Test, joining Polly Umrigar, Gundappa Viswanath, Sunil Gavaskar, VVS Laxman and Kapil Dev.
Faf du Plessis led from the front as South Africa flexed their bowling muscles to thrash Bangladesh by 52 runs in the first Twenty20 Internationals on Sunday to go 1-0 up in the two-match series.
Kohli has created a flutter by blaming 'doubtful decision-making' and lack of clarity for the debacle in Bangladesh.
When Bangladesh defeated India by 79 runs in the first One-day international in Mirpur on Thursday, they registered their ninth straight win at home. But the talking point of the match wasn't the historic result but the surprising show of aggression by India's captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Mumbai medium pacer Dhawal Kulkarni, who has played four ODIs for India (8 wickets), was named as a replacement for the injured Mohammed Shami in the One-day squad.
Rajneesh Gupta highlights important numbers featuring the West Indies team from the World Cups.
Sohag Gazi struck a maiden century as the Bangladesh lower order fought back on the fourth day of the first Test against New Zealand to leave the match in Chittagong heading for a draw.
A Bangladeshi blogger was on Monday hacked to death by suspected Islamists, a month after a prominent writer was killed in a similar attack in the national capital.
Batting legend Sunil Gavaskar hailed former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe, who passed away on Thursday, as one of the best batsmen in the history of the sport and a good thinker of the game.
Australia will be forced to blood an entirely new opening partnership in Bangladesh next month after David Warner was ruled out of the two-Test series with a broken finger on Friday.
Former Pakistan fast bowler and current United Arab Emirates coach Aaqib Javed feels that Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah will "find it difficult" to sustain for long without injury in international cricket with his unusual action.
India's premier spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has no complaints about the seaming track at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium in Mirpur despite it not offering much assistance to the spinners. The off-spinner believes it is important to understand the different conditions and adapt accordingly.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni will lead an 18-man squad for the Test series against England. Opener Gautam Gambhir, whose last Test was in 2012, makes a comeback while two uncapped medium pacers - Ishwar Pandey and Pankaj Singh - find a place in the team after Zaheer Khan, who had to set out of the India leg of the Indian Premier League following a back injury, was overlooked.
Bangladesh pacer Rubel Hossain, who has a history of altercations with Virat Kohli said that seeing India's batting mainstay at the other end pumps him up to bowl better. India is slated to face host Bangladesh in the Asia Cup scheduled to be held on February 24 in Mirpur. Rubel said that he enjoys his duel with Kohli since the under-19 days when both of them played for their respective teams in the 2008 junior World Cup. "Both of us go back a long way. I like the challenge. He is actually very aggressive on the field, but outside off it, he is a very nice guy.
Keacy Carty hit an unbeaten fifty to steer the West Indies to a thrilling five-wicket victory in the ICC Under-19 World Cup final, in Mirpur, on Sunday. Chasing India's paltry total of 145, the West Indies won with three balls to spare and claimed their maiden Under-19 World title.
A ruthless India equalled their biggest victory margin, decimating a lacklustre Sri Lanka by an innings and 239 runs in the second Test to take a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
Rajneesh Gupta presents some interesting numbers from Day 5:
Bangladesh's teenage fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman has been rewarded for his strong limited-overs performances with a call-up to the squad for next week's first Test against South Africa.
Yuvraj Singh's dreadful innings of 11 from 21 balls in the World T20 final against Sri Lanka in Mirpur last year led to his exclusion and the stylish left-hander admits that it 'always remained' at the back of his mind during the past year and half.
India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni blamed poor batting for the debacle in the series.
India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was fined 75 per cent of his match fees for allegedly shoving young Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman.
Notwithstanding Virat Kohli's theory of going in with five specialist bowlers in Tests, Mahendra Singh Dhoni says every individual's approach to captaincy is different and he will stick to his strategies in the limited-overs format against Bangladesh.
Jolted by the shock loss to New Zealand in the opening game, India will be fighting a survival battle quite early in the tournament when they take on arch foes Pakistan in what is being seen as the marquee clash of the ICC World Twenty20 in Kolkata on Saturday. The hosts, who started clear title-favourites, were in for a blow in the first match itself when New Zealand's spinners bamboozled their famed batting line-up on a turning Nagpur track. As a result, the world No.1 side is staring at an early elimination should it lose to Pakistan in the high-voltage game at the Eden Gardens. As is the case with most India-Pakistan contests, this game too has been preceded by its share of drama. The match was originally scheduled to be held in Dharamsala but was shifted here after the Himachal Pradesh government expressed inability to provide security to the Pakistan team owing to protests by ex-servicemen and their families.
Australia have employed former India all-rounder Sridharan Sriram as a coaching consultant to help with their troubles playing spin bowling in the leadup to their tour of Bangladesh.
Rajneesh Gupta has some interesting numbers from the match. Check them out.
Captain Ishan Kishan and Ricky Bhui smashed unbeaten centuries as three-time champion India crushed Canada by 372 runs in their warm-up match of the U-19 World Cup in Mirpur on Saturday.
Off-spinner Parveez Rasool on Sunday became the first cricketer from Jammu and Kashmir to represent India in a One-Day International when he took the field against Bangladesh in the first match in Mirpur.
40-year-old secular blogger Niloy Neel was an activist of the platform demanding capital punishment for the 1971 war criminals -- the Ganajagaran Mancha.
The world's top-ranked Test bowler said it's nice to have these numbers, but 'I have had a lot better moments in my cricketing career', after attaining the milestone. 'There was a period when I actually didn't want to have a ball in my hand, I think I just needed maybe two or three weeks off to get that love back again'
Undergoing a transition phase, defending champions Sri Lanka may not be in their elements in the build-up to the ICC World T20 but skipper Angelo Mathews today said it is good to carry the underdogs tag as it does not put the team under pressure. "The fact that we are coming as underdogs releases the pressure. Yes, we didn't do well in the Asia Cup but we're getting better day by day. I'm confident of my team's progress," Mathews said on the eve of their Super 10 opener against Afghanistan. Mathews said that his team needed just one win to get the momentum back. "We're not looking too far ahead at the moment and we will take one game at a time. We need one good game to get our momentum back," said the skipper. Afghanistan almost pulled off an upset during the 2015 World Cup in Australia when they threatened to chase down 237 before being bowled out for 232 in 49.4 overs and Mathews said Afghans were no more the minnows.
Former India cricketers tell Bikash Mohapatra/Rediff.com why it makes sense to change the Asia Cup format keeping in mind upcoming world events.
