Bangladesh may have moved from the cool climes of England to hot and humid Sri Lanka, but they don't seem to have left at customs the habit of wasting scintillating starts by the openers.
Imrul Kayes and Tamim Iqbal gave Bangladesh a fiery beginning, taking them to 81 for 1 in the 14th over, but some ordinary batting and canny spin bowling from Virender Sehwag resulted in two collapses of 3 for 19 and 6 for 12. Sehwag's 4 for 6 was the joint second-cheapest four-wicket haul in ODIs, behind Phil Simmons' 4 for 3 against Pakistan in 1992.Kayes and Tamim, as they did through the England tour, got Bangladesh off to a flier. They treated Praveen Kumar and Zaheer Khan with contempt at the top of the innings. Cut, drive, the odd edge, and 35 was up in the third over. Tamim then got carried away and hit at one he wasn't close enough to. Suresh Raina came up with a diving catch, but Kayes carried on the good work.
It was impressive that, though he was beaten consistently in the next two Zaheer overs, Kayes kept his head, ending a spell of 11 straight dots from Zaheer with a punched boundary. Runs slowed down, but the early start meant Bangladesh didn't need to panic. Mohammad Ashraful, though, got stuck, and exaggeratedly kept leaving deliveries outside off. There was not much in the pitch or the bowling, and Ashraful's over-cautious approach hurt Bangladesh. There was not one single taken in the first 10 overs.
Kayes kept Bangladesh going with back-to-back boundaries off Nehra in the 12th over, but Ashraful was about to make his inevitable mistake. Just like that he threw caution out and heaved Nehra straight to the only man on the square-leg boundary. Kayes made his mistake in Nehra's next over, being too slow in pulling a sharp bouncer. Shakib Al Hasan got a wicked straighter one from Harbhajan Singh.
The pitch had started offering turn now, and Harbhajan and Ravindra Jadeja were tough to get away. From 100 for 4, Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah, both of whom survived close lbw calls, took Bangladesh to 155, when madness struck again. Jadeja finally got his reward with a flat delivery that caught Mahmudullah's edge.
Immediately after, Sehwag was introduced. He bowled with lovely flight, slight drift, and mixed the straighter ones well. Mushfiqur bat-padded a flighted delivery which jumped at him from outside off. MS Dhoni saw that, and brought on Rohit Sharma too, who got a lucky break, with Naeem Islam given out caught-behind when it seemed the noise came from his bat hitting the ground.
In the next over Sehwag destroyed the tail. Suhrawadi Shuvo was fooled by the straighter one, Shafiul Islam swept all over an offbreak, and Syed Rasel was castled by another straighter one. Sehwag still had one ball left in what could have been a three-wicket maiden.
