Dead rubber aptly lacks panache

It was as big a dead rubber as it could be. The two teams - Chattogram Challengers and Dhaka Dominators - had nothing to gain as they were already out of the race for qualifying for the playoffs of the ongoing ninth edition of the Bangladesh Premier League.

And that transpired on to the field as both sides produced subpar performances, resulting in a low-scoring affair, which Chattogram managed to clinch by 15 runs.

Batting first, Chattogram were reduced to 28-5 early on but finally managed to crawl their way into the match by scoring 118-8.

However, that did not seem enough to the Chattogram players themselves, as stated by the player of the match Ziaur Rahman, who scored 34 runs and picked up two wickets.

“We were all mentally down. It was a low-scoring match. We just wanted to try. We did not have any plans to win the match as we had a low total,” he said in the post-match press conference.

And Dhaka were seemingly cruising to the win as they were 88-4 at one point, meaning they needed 31 runs off 25 balls with six wickets in hand.

However, skipper Nasir Hossain fell, and that saw Dhaka turn a mole of a chase into a molehill, and then slipped down the slope to score just 15 runs in those remaining balls to end on 103-9, 15 runs short of Chattogram’s total. After the match, Nasir said none of their batters took responsibility.

“It looked like we would win the match easily but nobody took the responsibility to secure the win. Even I tried and failed to do so,” the Dhaka skipper said.