Vin­ode Mam­chan

Five days ago, they were on op­po­site sides of a stormy Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 fi­nal but yes­ter­day Ke­iron Pol­lard and De­nesh Ramdin put that aside and fought to­geth­er to give the West In­dies a re­mark­able come­back three-wick­et win, in the first match of the Dha­ka Bank Cup at Queen's Park in Grena­da.

Af­ter skip­per Dwayne Bra­vo skulled four bats­men to re­duce Bangladesh to 217 for nine off their 50 overs, his side slipped to 34 for five, be­fore the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors skip­per forged a won­der­ful union with the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents skip­per, to leave Grena­di­an fans danc­ing in cel­e­bra­tion.

Pol­lard 89 and Ramdin 74 wiped off a cen­tu­ry made by Bangladesh open­er Ana­mul Haque ear­li­er, to give their side the lead in the three-match se­ries.

With the CPL still to de­cide on a com­plaint by the Ama­zon War­riors about the re­sult of the fi­nals, which went in favour of the Tri­dents, the two de­cid­ed to leave that to the of­fi­cials, as they bat­ted beau­ti­ful­ly in tan­dem.

When they joined forces the West In­dies were in dire straits at 34 for five. They took their time to ad­just to the pitch con­di­tion ini­tial­ly and grew in con­fi­dence as their in­nings went on. Ramdin, who has been bat­ting very well for the last year, kept the runs flow­ing while Pol­lard found his range. Both men reached half cen­turies in the process of bring­ing up the 100-run part­ner­ship off hun­dred balls. Pol­lard reached the land­mark first off 39 balls with three fours and four six­es and Ramdin ar­rived lat­er hav­ing used 62 balls, hit­ting four fours and a six.

When Ramdin fi­nal­ly fell for a bril­liant 74 off 76 balls with six fours and a six, the game was in hand. His as­so­ci­a­tion with Pol­lard was worth 145 off 21.5 overs and they just failed to clip the over­all record off 154 held by Jeff Du­jon and Richie Richard­son against Pak­istan in Shar­jah in 1991. Iron­i­cal­ly both men were at the ground, Richard­son be­ing the man­ag­er of the West In­dies team and Du­jon a tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor.

With vic­to­ry near­ing, Pol­lard swung hard in an ef­fort to get to a cen­tu­ry but fell to a won­der­ful run­ning catch by Mah­mudul­lah off Al-Amin Ho­sein for 89. He faced just 70 balls and struck five fours and six six­es.

Ear­li­er, Bra­vo won the toss and asked the vis­i­tors to take first strike on the pitch with some ear­ly mois­ture. The game start­ed in biz­zare cir­cum­stances as the play­ing are­na had more peo­ple than the stands. The pitch with bur­dened with the mois­ture was slow and Ke­mar Roach and Ravi Ram­paul, al­though keep­ing it tight, was not dead­ly.

The nor­mal­ly ex­plo­sive Tamim Iqbal and Haque made slow but sure progress and at the end of the ten-over pow­er play, they had re­alised 34 runs. They added a fur­ther sev­en be­fore Iqbal be­came the first Bangladeshi ca­su­al­ty on tour, hav­ing Iqbal caught off Ja­son Hold­er for 19.

Im­rul Kayes, who bat­ted well on Bangladesh's last tour of the Caribbean, was then run out, as the West In­dies kept the scor­ing in check. Kayes slogged the ball to deep mid­wick­et and took an easy sin­gle and de­cid­ed to press for an­oth­er. The bats­men then col­lid­ed in the mid­dle of the pitch and Kayes al­though re­gain­ing his com­po­sure, was still found short when Ramdin dis­turbed the stumps.

Sham­sur Rah­man (8), main man Mush­fiqur Rahim (12) and Mah­mudul­lah (11) kept Haque com­pa­ny for short pe­ri­ods and the short part­ner­ships could not have put the lo­cal on the back foot. Bra­vo con­tin­ued to switch his bowlers around, in an ef­fort to un­set­tle the bats­men and it worked. He him­self grabbed two wick­ets and would lat­er re­turn to col­lect an­oth­er two to fin­ish with 4/32 and push his tal­ly to 16 this year in ODI crick­et.

One man who stood as a rock was Haque. He brought up his half cen­tu­ry off 74 balls and had four hits to the ad­ver­tis­ing boards.

He found an able part­ner in Nas­sir Ho­sein and they start­ed to re-con­struct the in­nings from the per­ils off 141 for five.

The duo were able to lift the run rate over the pe­ri­od they were to­geth­er and when Hos­sain fell to Ram­paul for 26 - they had added 53 runs from 13.1 overs.

Through­out the in­nings, Haque showed great com­po­sure in the midst off all that was hap­pen­ing at the oth­er end. He played well with­in his lim­i­ta­tions, keep­ing it sim­ple. No one was re­al­ly able to take the at­tack apart and when the 200-run mark flashed on the screens, it had come off 289 balls - such was the dom­i­nance by the West In­dies bowlers.

Haque brought up his third ODI cen­tu­ry off 133 balls with nine fours and a top-edged six.

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SCORE­BOARD

WI vs Bangladesh

Bangladesh inns

A Haque lbw Bra­vo 109

T Iqbal c Pol­lard b Hold­er 26

I Kayes run out 9

S Rah­man c Ramdin b DJ Bra­vo 8

M Rahim c Nar­ine b Gayle 12

Mah­mudul­lah b DJ Bra­vo 11

N Hos­sain c Ram­paul b Ramdin 26

S Gazi run out 2

M Mor­taza c Pol­lard b Bra­vo 3

T Ahmed not out 0

Ex­tras lb2, w8, nb1 11

To­tal 9 wk­ts (50ovs) 217

FOW: 41, 68, 80, 117, 141, 194, 201,

Bowl­ing: K Roach 10-0-48-0 (1w), R Ram­paul 10-4-48-1 (3w), J Hold­er 9-0-39-1 (1w), DJ Bra­vo 7-0-32-4 (inb, 3w), S Nar­ine 10-1-29-0, C Gayle 4-0-19-1.

West In­dies inns

C Gayle c Al Amin Hos­sain b Mor­taza 3

K Ed­wards b Mah­mudul­lah 10

DM Bra­vo c Rahim b Amin 7

L Sim­mons c Rahim b Amin 0

D Ramdin b Gazi 74

D Bra­vo c Gazi b Amin 5

K Pol­lard c Mah­mudul­lah b Amin 89

J Hold­er not out 22

S Nar­ine not out 3

Ex­tras lb1, w5 6

To­tal 7 wk­ts (39.4ovs) 219

FOW: 9, 20, 20, 22, 34, 179, 201.

Bowl­ing: S Gazi 9-1-46-1, M Mor­taza 8-2-22-1, Mah­mudul­lah 4-0-20-1, Al-Amin Hos­sain 8.4-0-51-4, Taskin Ahmed 7-0-46-0, Nasir Hos­sain 2-0-20-0, Sham­sur Rah­man 1-0-13-0.

Re­sult: West In­dies won by 3 wk­ts.

Man-of-match: Ke­iron Pol­lard