Pacer Avesh Khan claimed four wickets to power India to an emphatic 82-run victory over Bangladesh in the Under-19 Tri-series one-day cricket tournament opener on Friday.
Defending a paltry 159, India were off to a splendid start as the tall pacer from Madhya Pradesh reduced Bangladesh to 23/4 in 6.2 overs with his rattling spell of 6-3-4-4.
The visitors were eventually bundled out for 76 in 22 overs for an one-sided win at the Jadavpur University ground in Salt Lake.
Khan was finely supported by left-arm pacer Kanishk Seth (2/45) at the other end as the duo bowled 12 overs in tandem before the offspin and legspin duo of Mayank Dagar (1/7) and Zeeshan Ansari (2/1) wiped out the tail to hand them a bonus point victory.
In the very first ball, Khan produced an off-cutter that sharply cut in, a ball Bangladeshi opener Mohammad Saif Hasan chose to leave as it clipped his off-stump as the visitors failed to recover from the terror.
He produced a superb spell with the new ball and generated bounce and movement off the seam to trouble the Bangladeshi top order.
In his next over, Khan had Pinak Ghosh (1) caught behind to continue his glorious spell as India could not have thought for a better start.
From the Bangladeshi perspective, none of their top-order batsman looked to hold on as they played some casual shots and wickets kept falling at regular interval against a small target.
“We’ve been playing together for about three years now and this is for the first time, I’ve seen such an atrocious batting. I totally blame the batsmen they did not apply themselves and we lost the game,” Bangladeshi skipper Mehidy Hasan Miraz told newsmen after their defeat.
“But we hope to bounce back, it’s a long tournament as we’ll play each other twice.”
