Payback time for Rafique!

[fwullah]

Rafique made the difference.

Even our most favorite Mashrafee was showing signs of cracking up under pressure giving wides and no balls at the 48th over, but Rafique was the coolest player in the field, using all his experience, he not only recorded his first ever 5 wicket hawl in ODIs, but also took his revenge against Kenya.

The names of Asif Karim, Md. Sheikh will not be remembered anymore, instead the name of Mohammad Rafique will be glowing ike diamonds in our hearts.

Today was the match when Kenya played like Kenya, which resulted in Bangladesh's downfall with the bat.

We lost 4 wickets for only 68 runs, proving to ourselves that our batsman are still not reliable enough to keep faith in them, even against a shadow of the Kenyan team that we used to know.

Having said that, it was very much expected that our batsman will not be consistent throughout the 4 matches against Kenya, and it happened exactly like that.

If it was not for our late order flourish along with Alok Kapali's contribution with the bat, we could have surely lost today's match, may be even the series.

After getting such a small target to chase, the Kenyan batsman showed their true nature with the bat, especially lower down the order, the reason for which I've been saying that Kenya is a very good side, doesn't matter that we won in such a huge margins in the last couple of matches. If the experienced players of Kenya like Tikolo, and Modi had been successful today, things could have been a lot different.

But thankfully for us, they could not - thanks to Abdur Razzak, whom I've been under-rating in my mind since his International debut, today he proved to me at least why he is in the team justifying his selection in the team and also our chief selector Faruque's wise decision and ofcourse, to our Man of the Match - ever-young, Md. Rafique.

However, the series is not finsihed yet, even though we have won the series convincingly in the last 2 matches, and deservingly in today's match, and if we are to whitewash Kenya, then we'll have to improve our batting, bowling and fielding altogether in the next match.

Because, we have even a tougher series coming up with Australia, and if we perform the way we did in this series so far, given the Kenyan team's experience and strength, we're not gonna fair well at all against Australia.

Thus, let our next series vs. Australia be as an inspiration to us, making our team more determined to clean sweep the Kenyans.

Edited on, March 23, 2006, 11:57 AM GMT, by fwullah.
Reason: sings-signs, and 1 sentence on Kapali

[Hasib]

Excellent post couldn't have said it better

[sar2005]

Nice post.

Yeah, In the point about Razzak, me too was annoyed with his regular inclusion in the side. But it again proved that our selctors are doing pretty good job and they know exactly who is performing and can perform for the team. Thanks to Razzaq for his decent bowling as well.

We must go to finish the serries with something that we did in first 2 matches. Today's match was almost near to a cliffhanger. I have to say it was due to a poor batting display in the middle and tail. I thought we were around 40 runs short today. Ofcourse you can not blame the tail-enders but our top and middle order needs to know how important to stay at the wicket.

I hope we will learn something from this and make it a clear difference again in the last ODI.

And for whom this thread is opened, Rafq!!!!!!
You are the best, you are the man

Edited on, March 23, 2006, 12:27 PM GMT, by sar2005.

[Mon]

MOM is Rafique and rightly so. Congrats to this old tiger who refuses to be tamed by age.

[Hasib]

My only regrat about Rafique....he STILL hasn't learnt english

[BanglaCool]

"If it was not for our late order flourish along with Alok Kapali's contribution with the bat, we could have surely lost today's match, may be even the series."
We couldn't have lost the series. No way.

"Even our most favorite Mashrafee was showing signs of cracking up under pressure giving wides and no balls at the 48th over,"

Mashrafee got 3 wickets. In the end who has the last laugh? You can get battered if you are desperately taking chances with your bat. Mashrafee is not to blame.

[nayef]

great post... hats off to rafique for yet another herculean all-round performance...

[sadi]

I think Rafique batted quite well..... he was taking his chances with the bat and till he got out, he looked quite dangerous.... actually it was quite a good move by the team management to send him before masud as the powerplay was still going on.... his quick innings gave masud extra time to get settled and take it easy....... i liked the six he hit when the fielder caught the ball but he already crossed the rope... reminded me of pathan catch of flintoff

[atheist]

Originally posted by Hasib
My only regrat about Rafique....he STILL hasn't learnt english

So your only "regrat" that Rafique hasn't learned english? May be Rafique is not the only one we know :P

[Tigers_eye]

Congrates Rafique for the 5 for and great batting.

for the irresponsible batting by the top order except SN and aftab.

[Hatebreed]

Nice to see you making constructive and well-balanced post FW.. Insh'Allah we'll comeback in the final ODI with our best performance to whitewash the Kenyas into oblivion.

[Rabz]

who gives a rat's flying arse if rafiq cudnt master the art of english language by now..as long as he has devoted that precious time perfecting his bowling skills which could bring us win...im quite happy bout it...

let his bowling do the talkin for him..and for those who doesnt understand other than english..let them get a personal translator...

cheers bangladesh
cheera rafiq..u r freaking great....



btw..nice post though fwuallah

[Warlock]

Nice post FWullah- gave us a break from your recent "my cousin said..." kind of threads. OK, jokes aside- today's results showed that it is the veterans who save the day when things seem lost. Aftab and S Nafees are getting a lot of attention for their wonderful performances in this series- but today was a good occasion to remind ourselves once again of the importance of our evergreen hero- Md. Rafiq.:P

[fwullah]

"We couldn't have lost the series. No way."

Giving away the chance to drawing the series to Kenya is equal to losing the series to me, after 300 run total and 9 wicket win.

[pagol-chagol]

Someone please collect a list of threads where we went gaga about Rafiq.

Do we have a search feature like that?

People here forget things so easily. Soon he'll get old and start getting "gaalis".

We need to have a search features where we can find old threads about each player easily. We might already have that. I don't know...

[SMHasan]

Originally posted by Hasib
My only regrat about Rafique....he STILL hasn't learnt english

Because some things in this world never change and yet some things do!

[RazabQ]

Rafique's line was the difference here. Off late he'd been bowling a terrible line - down the leg and not giving the ball air. Yesterday he was bowling consistently around mid and off and got the resultant wickets. Also, loved his switch to over the wicket after getting tonked in the 47th over by duOngondo. His Gile-esque bowling in the 49th over killed the match for the Kenyans.

Did you all catch him waving "bye bye" to Ongondo after bowling him? Priceless.

Fahmida, a rare rational post from you Reminded me of the old days

[billah]

Rafiq was once fined for doing a similar gesture to an English batsman. Batsman was given out, Rafiq pointed him towards the pavillion.

I liked the way he appealed for that last lbw, screaming while backing up..