Afif Hossain and Mehidy Hasan formed a tremendous 174-run seventh wicket partnership that guided Bangladesh to a four-wicket win over Afghanistan in the first game of the three-match-one-day international series at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram on Wednesday.
Afif and Mehidy remained unbeaten on 93 off 115 balls and 81 off 120 balls respectively to take the Tigers to 219-6 with seven balls to spare.
Afif and Mehidy are now the holders of the highest seventh wicket partnership for Bangladesh, a record previously owned by Imrul Kayes and Mohammad Saifuddin, who added 127 runs against Zimbabwe back in 2018.
Afghan pacer Fazalhaq Farooqi rattled Bangladesh’s chase early on and finished on career-best 4-19 while Rashid Khan and Mujib Ur Rahman took one wicket each.
For Bangladesh, Mustafizur Rahman finished with 3-35 while Shakib Al Hasan, Taskin Ahmed, Shoriful Islam claimed two wickets each to restrict Afghanistan to 215 in 49.1 overs.
For the visitors, Najibullah Zadran scored the highest 67 off 84 balls while Rahmat Shah and Mohammad Nabi finished with 34 and 20 respectively.
Batting first, Afghanistan made a stumbling start as they lost their opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz for seven.
In the second wicket stand, Ibrahim Zadran and Rahmat Shah added 45 runs before the former gave a catch to Yasir Ali at the slip for 19 off 23 balls off Shoriful Islam and his partner also fell to Mahmudullah for 28.
But Nazibullah formed a 63-run partnership with Nabi which took the total over 200.
Fazalhaq almost singlehandedly ended Bangladesh’s hopes of chasing down a 2016-run target as he struck four times to reduce the hosts to 18-4 in five overs.
Mujeeb then removed Shakib for 10 and Rashid dismissed Mahmudullah for eight to leave the Tigers stuttering at 45-6 in 11.2 overs.
But in the seventh wicket stand, Afif and Mehidy formed an incredible partnership, where the duo tactfully persevered against Afghanistan’s deadly spin-trio, kept rotating the strike and hit boundaries when the opportunity came.
As he partnership grew bigger, the pressure started to shift towards the visitors, who were left scratching their heads against the resolute batting of Afif and Mehidy.
Afif and Mehidy took Bangladesh to the winning shores in the penultimate over and gave them another 10 points in the ICC ODI Super League.
