 Bangladesh
take on Ireland in the ninth game of the World Cup on February 25. The match will
be played at the Shere Bangla Stadium in Mirpur in Dhaka and will see the
two teams fight it out for ultimate glory – given that they are the lowly ranked
sides.
This is of course, not to say that Bangladesh will not be the favourites.
Given that the game is being played at home for Bangladesh under the hot and
muggy conditions and the fact that the track will help the spinners, it makes
Bangladesh favourites to win this game. However, it will not be too easy.
Click for Live Score Card of Bangladesh Vs Ireland
For one, Ireland has a decent side and possesses the ability to fight
it out amongst the best of the sides, in much the same manner as the Netherland
side did against England. On the top of it, one senses that Ireland has a better
bowling attack than the Dutch side and while it is not full of spinners, it
will need some good batting to get the better of the likes of Boyd Rankin.
Having said that, the interesting bit is that their batting is doing rather well in recent times as a unit. They may not have too many individual stars, but the Irish batsmen contribute well as a team. In the two warm-up games, there were contributions from everywhere – including the likes of Ed Joyce, William Porterfield, Alex Cussack and some of the others who managed to get the big scores.
As compared to this, Bangladesh also has a decent line-up. the batting in the previous game against India was good enough to take the runs off the opposition bowlers and they got to more than 280 in the match against India.
It is the Bangladeshi bowling that needs to have a look at how they need to
go about their business. The pace bowling was so ragged in the game against
India that Shakib al Hasan had criticised the bowlers and one would have thought
that they are missing Mashrafe Mortaza. Of course, one also senses that
it will be foolish to drop the pacemen after just one failure and another chance
against a side like Ireland could be afforded to get their confidence back.
The key bowler, to me, is Abdur Razzaq who will look to spin a web around the Irish bowlers in the game.
|
