“Before I go to sleep” is a mystery psychological thriller released in 2014. Academy-award winning actress Nichole Kidman played the main role of it as a woman who suffered brain damage due to a car accident that happened ten years earlier. When she woke up from a coma she had no memory of the previous day or last ten years.
Freehit contributor – Dilan Gunasekara
Akin to that, in 2005, Bangladesh cricket fans too seemed to have no memory regarding cricket. The difference was the woman lost her memory due to an accident, but Bangladesh cricket fans were intentionally erasing what happened on the cricket field from their minds due to their cricket team’s sloppy performances.
Under these circumstances, Bangladesh toured England for a two-match test series and followed it with a limited over triangular series which also featured Australia. In the first part of the series, the results weren’t different. Bangladesh faced a 2-0 drubbing at the hands of the home-side.
Now they moved onto the limited-overs leg trying to change their fortunes. In the first match of the triangular series, the home side thrashed Bangladesh by 10 wickets. On the 18th of June 2005, Bangladesh locked horns with then defending limited-overs champions Australia who were led by charismatic captain Ricky Ponting. This match was the second match of the triangular series which was played at Sofia Gardens Stadium in Cardiff.
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Australia won the toss and decided to bat first on a placid Cardiff wicket. The Bangladeshi opening fast bowlers made early inroads by removing the belligerent Adam Gilchrist, who was dismissed without troubling the scorers by Mashrafee Mortaza. A lynchpin of the Kangaroo batting lineup, Ricky Ponting, made only a single. Then Matthew Hayden and Damien Marting added 48 runs for the third wicket.
Nazmul Hossain came up with another decisive blow when he removed Mathew Hayden with the score on 57. The former Queensland batsman tried to raise the tempo and eventually perished for 37 runs which included four boundaries and one humongous six.
For the first time in history the Bangladesh bowlers were dominating the reigning world champions. Slowly and steadily Martin and Clarke built the innings. They hardly went for lusty blows and always looked to accumulate ones and twos. They built a good platform that helped their lower middle-order batsmen play some useful cameos. Clarke and Martin put on 108 runs for the fourth wicket and Martin eventually fell for painstaking 77 runs from 112 balls which included only two boundaries.
“One brings two”, is one of the famous ideologies in cricket. That was proved shortly when the score was 183, when Michael Clarke departed for 54 after consuming 84 balls. A late surge by Mr.Cricket- Michael Hussey and Simon Katich injected much-needed momentum. They eventually posted a competitive but not imposing total of 249 from their allocated 50 overs. Hussey scored 31 and Katich made 36 runs. Both were very handy little cameos in the context of the game. They ransacked 66 runs from the last six and a half overs.
Bowling honors for Bangladesh were won by the tall, lanky fast bowler Tapaz Basia. Though he was expensive he got three crucial scalps. Veteran spinner Mohammed Rafique was wicketless but he did his part by conceding only 31 runs from his 10 over quota. That really helped Bangladesh to strangle the Kangaroo middle order.
Though this wasn’t an imposing total, against a formidable bowling attack that included great Glenn Mcgrath and co, definitely, this was not going to be a cakewalk for Bangladesh. Under these circumstances, Nafeez Iqbal and Javed Omar opened the batting for Bangladesh to chase this daunting target of 250. When the score was 17, Jason Gillespie removed the first brick out of the Bangladesh wall by dismissing Nafeez Iqbal for eight. Brad Hogg’s wrist spin was too good for Tushar Imran who eventually fell for 24 runs.
When Habibul Bashar joined Mohammed Ashraful, the Tigers had lost three wickets for 72 runs. Ashraful, was a dashing batsman, who won his first test cap against Sri Lanka at SSC in 2001. In his very first test match, he scored a stroke-filled and enterprising 114 in a territory where world-class batsmen struggle to score runs freely and pitches become a minefield in the last two and half days. He scored that masterclass century against world champion off-spinner- Murali and the islanders’ greatest fast bowler Chaminda Vaas. Mohammed Ashraful converted the raging, dipping, deteriorating, and turning dustbowl SSC pitch to a feather bed and signaled to the world that Bangladesh had found a exciting young talent.
Coming back to the match at hand, when the score was 72 for 3, odds were against them. The scorers probably planned to pack their bags and go home early and enjoy dinner or go out for dinner out with their family members. But Habibul Bashar and Ashraful had other ideas. Both batsmen realized that what they needed at the time was to steady the innings. Captain Bashar played the second fiddle to Ashraful and rotated the strike expertly. Whenever the run-scoring opportunities came by, Ashraful took calculated risks and they eventually came off.
When they needed 48 runs from 37 balls, Habibul Bashar was run out trying to pinch a single via an overthrow. That dismissal ended a match-turning, brilliant partnership of 130 runs which gave the Tigers more than a hope of an upset.
With a big-hitting reputation, Aftab Ahamed came to the crease. When Bangladesh needed 32 runs from 24 balls, Ponting handed over the ball to Aussie fast bowling spearhead, the ever-reliable Glenn Mcgrath.
But Ashraful had no time for reputations, the very first ball he faced in that over was swept to the at fine-leg. He brought up his maiden ODI hundred with a single to long-on with the last delivery of the over. The century is still regarded as arguably the greatest ODI ton scored by a Bangladeshi batsman. Coincidentally, Ashraful had been at the ground as a ball boy when Mehrab Hossain scored the country’s first ODI ton against Zimbabwe in 1999. In the 48th over Ashraful’s epic innings came to an end when Gillespie got his prized wicket. Bangladesh still needed 23 runs to win from 12 balls and Australia’s hopes were high after seeing the exit of Ashraful. But those hopes were quickly blown away by Mohammed Rafique when he hit two vital boundaries against Gillespie.
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Bangladesh started the final over with seven runs to get and Ricky Ponting handed the ball to Gillespie. 19-year-old Aftab Ahamed fetched the first delivery of the last over from outside off stump and absolutely walloped it over cow corner for a towering six to send the Cardiff crowd into ecstasy.
That blow really fixed the final nail in the Australian coffin. Aftab and Rafique pinched a quick single to record a memorable triumph against the World champions, Australia.
The Cardiff match is the only limited overs game in which Bangladesh has beaten Australia. In 2017, they won a test match against Australia for the very first time.
