India started their Asia Cup campaign in confident fashion, when they defeated Bangladesh in their opening match. Bangladesh once again failed to capitalize on a great start by their openers, and collapsed to give a nominal target of 167. India, steered by their spinners, destroyed the Bangladeshi batting order to set up their first victory of the tournament.
Bangladesh started their innings with great confidence. The buoyancy in their play was evident as Imrul Kayes and Tamim Iqbal bashed the Indian bowling attack in the opening overs. But after losing their first wicket, Bangladesh batsmen became cautious and took the innings in steady fashion. Ashraful and Kayes took the Bangladesh score to 81 before Ashraful lost his wicket. With the partnership broken, India succeeded in receding Bangladesh’s momentum when they kept on taking wickets on short regular intervals. With Harbhajan and Ravindra Jadeja restricting Bangladesh to 100-4, Virender Sehwag was brought into the attack. Sehwag’s crafty spin was too much for the Bangladesh team to handle, and they dropped their wickets one after another. Sehwag took 4 wickets in total, off 17 deliveries, to wrap up the Bangladesh innings. His bowling figure of 4-6 was the second cheapest four-wicket haul in ODIs.
With a modest total of 167, India started their chase with the objective of acquiring the bonus point. Indian openers started their innings in formidable fashion, as Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir bashed Bangladesh’s bowlers in the first spell of the Powerplay. After the dismissal of Sehwag, Gambhir and Virat Kohli took the score to 80-1. Bangladesh showed some resistance when Shakib removed Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma in two consecutive deliveries to reduce India to 80-3. However, as the score was too low to defend, Indian batsmen easily absorbed the pressure and steered their team to victory. The main architect of the Indian innings was Gambhir, who scored a solid 82.
For India, this victory marked the return of seven senior players back to the team after they recovered from their injuries. But the main highlight of the Indian play was the sensible innings of Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir made a swift transition from months of playing T20 cricket to ODIs. Talking to the media, he said, “When you are in Twenty20 mode, you want to really hit the ball and these aren't the conditions for that. You have to graft your way through, and initially I was thinking of hitting the ball before I realized I have 50 overs, and not 20, to play.”
Another problem confronting not only the Indian team but also other teams of the tournament and especially the event organizers is dim floodlights, which makes it difficult for batsman to see the ball. “If you saw the last game also, the ball does a lot more [under lights] than in the afternoon. The kind of atmosphere here, the kind of breeze and kind of wickets here, it would definitely do a lot, anything around 250-260 will be a very good total on this track,” Gambhir said.
According to Gambhir, this victory also diminishes remnant effects of their dismal performance in the World T20 Championship and their tour of Zimbabwe, and it also reduces pressure on their upcoming high-profile game against archrivals Pakistan. Commenting on this, Gambhir said, “You come back fresh, you forget what happened at the World Twenty20, you have more energy and you are more eager to perform.”
Meanwhile, Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan is furious at his team for losing early initiative. He has asked his teammates to perform as one unit instead of playing as individuals. Talking to reporters, he said, “We played well as individuals but not as a team, that's an area we need to improve on a lot.” According to the Bangladesh skipper, Bangladesh will need to raise the level of their game if they need to beat the giants of Asia. He said, “We are playing against teams better than us and we need to work out every time we go out and play. But it's not been happening for the last six months. We are trying our level best and have been working hard at our game.”
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