[Sohel]

It was the fourth and final day of a first class match that pitted river-locked Dhaka against rivals Chittagong by the Bay of Bengal. In the fourth round of this season’s NCL and after watching no less than two probable wins slip out of their grasp and end up as draws, in fact one of those probable wins almost handing victory to the less glamorous Barisal last week, fourth place Dhaka was in desperate need of a victory. Bottom feeding Chittagong with its stellar lineup of marauding batsmen needed a victory even more desperately.

Shahadat Hossain Rajib, the spearhead of Dhaka’s bowling attack, was out sick and Nafees Iqbal Khan, one of the most talented top order Bangladeshi batsmen to date once hailed as the future captain of the side, found himself warming the bench for Chittagong.

Dhaka was comfortably in the driver’s seat by the end of day three, thanks to some awkward and unsightly, but also patient and effective batting from their strokeless and googlie-eyed opener Javed Omar Belim who for once did his JOB with 101 runs. The ineffective batting from star Chittagonian batsmen who again failed to deliver on their long awaited promise and go on to meet our expectations as fans, also helped.

The start of day four saw Dhaka Captain Mohammad Ashraful out with a fever, leaving his deputy and abject failure Al Shahriar Rokon in charge to deliver an early breakthrough by trying to manage the bowlers at his disposal, and possibly setting the field according to their abilities. Chittagong found themselves trailing by 11 runs after managing to lose 4 wickets despite the promising start from the immensely talented, but still impetuous young Tamim Iqbal Khan who decided to throw his wicket away after scoring 70 wonderfully sensible runs. The tall and limited Masumuddowla overstayed his welcome, Mohammad Nazimuddin continued to disappoint with his strangely taciturn cameo in the middle, and Aftab Ahmed was just being himself during the course of his 30 odd runs. He just came and went the way he usually does before Captain Ehsanul Haq Shezan and Faisal Hossain Dickens stopped the damage late in day three.

With bland but tricky Dickens in the middle with the no frills Shezan, another stepchild of Bangladeshi cricket in the tradition of the less technically sound but better scoring Tushar Imran to keep him company, Chittagong found itself staring down the barrel of an almost certain defeat. ALMOST because we are after all “thrill a minute” Bangladeshis who have embraced those glorious uncertainties of cricket more intimately than most, even more than Pakistanis from where I’m sitting.

So imagine their surprise when some typically inept and blasé captaincy from Rokon allowed them to ease back into the match and ponder a feasible draw during the first hour of play. They started to graft a partnership without too much difficulty as Rokon remained passive and positively HaBa-esque in his field settings, waiting for something to happen with his alleged mind on GOD knows what. His bowlers, including the wily veteran Mohammad Rafiq wasn’t going to get anything from their substitute captain, and if Rafiq wasn’t going to, neither could the twin mediocrity of the Slow Left Armer “Ghost Face Killah” Rubel and the supposedly reverse swinging lollipops from “All-rounder” Sharif. The less said about the skeletal Robin’s gentler medium pacers, and the somewhat effective but nevertheless part-time charms of Mehrab Jr. the better. Riyad, an excellent ‘containment’ bowler sans the knack for picking up wickets, is sparingly used in the longer versions of the sport for good reason, and nobody was about to rock that little boat. The early session was coming to a close with Dhaka leaking runs like a senile old drunk’s bladder in the proverbial Tenderloin District, USA.

With an anxious Ashraful looking on from the dressing room and popping Tylenol, Excedrin, Advil and what have you like candy, it was clearly time for Rafiq to take matters into his own hands and deliver the crucial breakthrough before Rokon’s esoteric genius let the situation degenerate further. He had to come up with a script which can set up a wicket for the taking, either by catching a batsman LBW-ed and caught with his pants down, or knocking off his stumps. He chose Dickens, the lesser of the two batsmen, as his probable victim and rose to the occasion as only he can.

He angled in and neatly grouped the first three balls on the same spot just outside off, turning in towards the batsman a bit. Although the deliveries seemed similar enough to the naked eye, he varied his pace in each, keeping an increasingly comfortable Dickens guessing into discomfort and unease as he defended those deliveries in used-book fashion, meaning all the required substance but without the flash and fragrance of something less handled.

Then came the beautiful arm ball from Mohammad Rafiq which sent Faisal Hossain Dickens back to the dressing room at 25. Looking at a delivery fed into the same line and length, Dickens expected the ball to turn a bit once again from just outside off stump, and ended up being duped into misjudging the real line of the pitch completely. The ball never turned despite all the signs to the contrary, and he found himself CLEAN BOWLED and bamboozled to the core, walking back to the dressing room plunged into deep disbelief and despair after the initial daze left his system. Shezan just dropped his jaw and stared on as Dhiman Ghosh, the last recognizable batsman in the Chittagong card, took guard. Dhiman survived the next two deliveries but the early and irreversible damage was done for Chittagong.

The veteran had struck again and bought his Captain some precious time before he relieved Rokon from the clutches of captaincy right before lunch. As Mohammad Ashraful’s fever subsided a bit, the chances of a Dhaka victory also increased dramatically, all thanks to the subtly critical over from the tirelessly innovative Mohammad Rafiq, still the very best we are fortunate to have.

Chittagong’s last chances to build a partnership and force an unlikely draw ended with an atrocious caught behind decision that saw Dhiman walk back to the dressing room after some damn good batting. The last wicket partnership between Tareq ‘MBA’ Aziz and Rubel ‘Malinga’ Hossain gave Chittagong a 103 run lead before forcing Dhaka to bat, but did little to prevent the inevitable with 40 overs left in the day.

Defending champions Dhaka, led by the innovative mind and aggressive instincts of National Captain Mohammad Ashraful, made SURE that those runs were indeed too little, too late, and looked certain to cruise to an easy victory and 16 points, keeping them very much in contention for the championship this NCL season.

But wait, surely not even the customarily moronic dismissals of Anwar and Rokon could prevent Dhaka from winning the match? Not if Dhaka’s second innings wonders can help it.

Mohammad Ashraful, apparently still battling fever, came in and hit a lovely boundary viciously driven past gully, before casually guiding the next delivery straight into the surprised second slip fielder’s palms, and created some excitement. But that excitement was short lived as soon as Javed Omar Belim was joined in the middle by Mehrab Hossain Junior, his younger, left-handed and upgraded version, and the crowd of 10 to 12 thousand spectators gasped in fear, pondering the questionable wonders of watching paint dry. Luckily for them, Javed Omar Belim, a smoker of fine multinational cigarettes like his former National Captain and Vice-captain, got himself run-out and spared us all the European beaux-arts. The direct hit from a very young Kamrul Islam played a part too as Senior was trying to take a second run which simply wasn’t there.

In came Shamsur Rahman Shubho, took no time to protrude his butt skyward and poke at a delivery just outside off like a skittish little novice with his feet glued inside the crease. Less than a second later, Dhiman Ghosh gloved another first class dismissal to his name. “Barisal Story: The Chittagong Sequel” was in the works, to be directed by our very own Hatebreed in the not too distant future. Suddenly Dhaka found themselves 5 wickets down with an hour left to get those 50 odd winning runs.

Mahmudullah Riyad, a tall and athletic graduate of the “Javed Omar Belim School of Cricketing Excitement” came in to deliver the goods. With his shorter partner showing the way in the middle with him, Riyad treated all of us to dot balls and blocked shots off docile deliveries from extremely young and no name slow bowlers, and continued to generate excitement as the Sun prepared to set itself where it usually does. Rotating the strike was absent enough in his game to seem positively exotic, as Mehrab on the other end began to feel the heat also. They have obviously been taught well by the Founder.

Soon afterwards, the pressure built up faster than the fading light and the panic set in even faster. Luckily for Dhaka, Riyad suddenly managed to shake himself loose from the well-cultivated lethargy, and started banging away in reckless abandon. He continued to survive by the Supreme Grace of our Lord and Savior, until GOD decided enough is enough and it was time for Riyad to reap what he has been sowing all this time. He was clean bowled trying to poorly sweep an ordinary delivery from the impressive Saju Dutt, perhaps the new Rafiq if 5 years or so. In came Rafiq, took guard and skied one straight to Dickens, his hapless victim from earlier in the day.

I mean why go for 1s and 2s when you can thick edge 4s and 6s and throw your wicket away if you can’t? Live dangerously and to hell with whatever. In the meantime, light was REALLY becoming a SERIOUS issue with 16 more runs to go and 3 wickets in hand.

Mehrab was caught absolutely plumb off a full pitched delivery from young Kamrul, but the obvious call was mysteriously denied by the magnificent local umpire who decided to out-Asoka Asoka for the second time today. He signaled leg byes and added more luster to robbing Dhiman Ghosh earlier in the day. It was 92 for 7, and Dhaka needed 9 runs to win with minutes left in the game. In fact, the umpires offered Dhaka batsmen light which they promptly turned down. The umpire whipped out a light meter and allowed the match to continue. Mehrab, now really panicky, edged one right through slip and put 4 more runs on the board, and then almost hit another, cleaner one, to be heroically saved right at the ropes by Kamrul’s desperate dive.

The match eventually resulted in a much awaited second Dhaka victory by 3 wickets basically on the back of some panicky, streaky and risky shots from Riyad, and as soon as it was over, the overall cricketing merit of the match started to fade like raindrops on scorching asphalt from our summers. But that gem of an over from Mohammad Rafiq will never fade that easily. He has done it before and by the infinite grace of GOD, he will do it again, and just like most of those other times in the past, his wiles and guile will make other SLAs pale in comparison.