Tigers waiting for a miracle

Miracles do happen. But they happen very rarely, which is why it is called a miracle. If nothing miraculous takes place on day five of the Chattogram Test between Pakistan and Bangladesh, the home team is all set to lose.

Pakistan, chasing 202 runs in their second innings, finished day four on 109 for no loss. They have all their wickets in their hand and the entire fifth day to score only 93 more runs, and the wicket is still behaving a lot better than a typical sub-continent wicket.

Bangladesh bowled 33 overs on day four, and out of those 26 overs were bowled by spinners, but they hardly could put any pressure on the openers from Pakistan.

Abid Ali, who scored a hundred in the first innings, is unbeaten on 56 runs. He has played 105 balls and hit six boundaries while his young partner Abdullah Shafique was unbeaten on 53 from 93 deliveries where he hit six boundaries and one six.

Bangladesh will need to take all the wickets to stop Pakistan from winning this Test match, and they will have to do it without conceding much.

The ongoing Test match at Chattogram has already produced some unexpected spectacles which could serve as a great advertisement for Test cricket.

Bangladesh looked very brittle in the first session of day one against Shaheen Shah Afridi and Hasan Ali but made a strong comeback in the later parts of the day as Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das formed a 206-run partnership to bring the Tigers back in the game.

But day two unfolded with another batting collapse of Bangladesh, and Abdullah Shafique and Abid Ali also had a great partnership promising a big total. But next morning, Taijul Islam bowled beautifully to fold Pakistan from 146-0 to 286-10.

In this game of glorious uncertainty, none can predict what’s in store for day five, but in plain eyes, Pakistan look like favourites as they have only 93 more runs to win with 10 wickets in hand.

But cricket does not follow the laws of physics every single time, making the game more interesting.

In the previous Test match at this very ground, a second-string West Indies side needed 285 more runs to win, and Bangladesh needed only seven wickets.

Debutants Nkrumah Bonner and Kyle Mayers were the two unbeaten batsmen at the crease when the fifth day began. Bangladesh had three spinners at their disposal.

The question was, how long can the Caribbeans survive? But they survived till the end.

A double hundred from Kyle Mayers took the game away from Bangladesh, leading to a three-wicket win for West Indies, which was nothing short of a miracle.

Five years ago, when England came to tour Bangladesh for the last time, they were almost cruising to win the second Test of the series at Dhaka. Chasing 273 runs in their second innings, they were 100-0 at one stage, with openers Alistair Cook and Ben Duckett scoring half-centuries.

Then all of a sudden, they crumbled like a house of cards. From 100-0, they were all out for 164 runs. Mehidy Hasan Miraz took six wickets, Shakib Al Hasan took the remaining four, and Bangladesh registered their only Test victory over England by 108 runs.

Today, Bangladesh have to defend 93 runs and must pick up 10 wickets, a herculean task but not impossible.

At present, Bangladesh is ‘clinically dead’ in this Test, and Pakistan are only a few steps away from writing the ‘death certificate’, but sometimes lucky ones can escape.

Only a miracle can save Bangladesh. They have been at both ends of such wonders, and now they wait again.