The hosts put in a strong all-round showing in the second test match of the Sri Lanka-Bangladesh test series, winning by 209 runs over their sub-continental opponents.
While the efforts of Lahiru Thirimanne and Dimuth Karunaratne, two of the emerald islanders’ most seasoned batsmen, provided plenty of cause for celebration, it was their new-look spin-bowling attack that made the biggest impression.
Praveen Jayawickrama, a debutant left-arm spinner, shone with a man-of-the-match score, finishing with figures of 11/178. Ramesh Mendis’ dextrous off-break bowling, who was making his second test-match debut, aided him greatly. The Sri Lankan spin-twins (troika if part-timer Dhananjaya de Silva is included) wrecked havoc on Bangladesh’s batting line-up, never enabling the visitors to settle in and picking up vital scalps at crucial moments in the game.
Just Mushfiqir Rahim, Tamim Iqbal, and captain Mominul Haque provided some face-saving cameos for Bangladesh’s batting effort. The Bangla Tigers put in a poor and lacklustre showing, which is fitting given the focus of our highlights reel for today.
Taijul Islam drops his shoe on the stumps and knocks the bails off.
Bangladesh finished their first innings on 251, 242 runs behind Sri Lanka’s first innings total of 493. The last man to collapse was Taijul Islam, and his firing was quite unusual.
Taijul Islam played a defensive shot towards the silly-point area in an effort to divert a length delivery from Suranga Lakmal’s bowling. Unfortunately, Taijul moved his backwards a little too awkwardly, forcing his left foot’s shoe to turn and nudge the stumps. The bails even fell off as a result of the movement, and Taijul was ruled out by hit-wicket, one of the most unlucky forms to be dismissed in modern cricket.
About the fact that Taijul had clearly knocked off the bails, the umpires chose to do a full video check. We were able to procure this high-quality video of Taijul Islam and his bizarre firing as a result of this. Here’s the link to the video: