It was a virtual semi-final between two sides who both managed to beat Sri Lanka in the Super Fours but proved no match for defending champions India in the Twenty20 tournament.<\/p>\n
The two neighbours come into the final with tensions high after India angered Pakistan with a ‘no handshake’ stance in their previous two matches in the tournament, their first cricket clashes since the four-day cross-border conflict in May which left more than 70 people dead.<\/p>\n
Put in to bat on Thursday, Pakistan posted 8-135 and even that modest total did not look a possibility when they were reeling at 4-46 at the halfway stage of their innings.<\/p>\n
Shaheen Afridi (3-17) and Haris Rauf (3-33) then led their suffocating assault with the ball as Pakistan restricted Bangladesh to 9-124 to set up a mouth-watering clash with India, who have beaten them twice already in the tournament.<\/p>\n
“If we can win these kind of games, then we must be a special team,” Pakistan captain Salman Agha said.<\/p>\n
“We were like 10, 15 runs short, there’s no way I’m going to deny that. But I knew if we bowl like that, we can create pressure.<\/p>\n
“In a game like this, when it’s almost a semi-final, when you create pressure up front, it’s hard to chase.”<\/p>\n
Pakistan made five runs from the first 10 balls, losing two key wickets in the process and were reeling at 5-49 in the 11th over.<\/p>\n
Taskin Ahmed (3-28) removed Sahibzada Farhan in the first over and spinner Mahedi Hasan, sharing the new ball, dismissed Saim Ayub for the batter’s fourth duck in the tournament.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s lower order, however, did not give up so easily.<\/p>\n
Afridi (19) hit a couple of sixes while Mohammad Haris (31) and Mohammad Nawaz (25) made useful contributions down the order to take Pakistan past the 125-mark.<\/p>\n
Almost mirroring their opponents’ shambolic start, Bangladesh, rattled by Afridi’s early double strike, slumped to 3-29 in the sixth over.<\/p>\n
Afridi dismissed Parvez Hossain Emon and Towhid Hridoy to deny Bangladesh a strong start and went on to dismiss Shamim Hossain, who top-scored for Bangladesh with a fluent 30.<\/p>\n
Rauf then mowed down Bangladesh’s lower order to secure their passage to the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a virtual semi-final between two sides who both managed to beat Sri Lanka in the Super…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-169056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}