Bangladesh defeated Australia by 10 runs in the third T20 international and registered their first-ever series win over Australia.
Chasing a modest total of 128 runs, Australia needed 22 runs from the last over to keep the series alive after losing the first two games of the series. However, Mahedi Hasan held his nerves and denied the pair of Alex Carey and Dan Christian the chance to win the game.
The bowling trio of Mustafizur Rahman, Shakib Al Hasan and Nasum Ahmed were the chief architects of Bangladesh’s historic series win. and
Australia suffered from the lack of firepower and experience of playing on low and slow surfaces. They dropped Josh Phillipe, who has not had a good form with the bat and the stand-in skipper Matthew Wade promoted himself back to the top of the order. The move, however, did not yield fruitful results as he perished very early on and his partner Ben McDermott could not quite get into the momentum of scoring runs.
Mitchell Marsh enhanced his reputation further with another slow and steady fifty run score. However, lack of support from the other end and his inability t break free against Mustafizur and spinners did not help Australia at all.
Earlier, Bangladesh too suffered a collapse of their top order with openers Mohammad Naim and Soumya Sarkar failing to get going. Shakib played some delightful strokes to get Bangladesh going, but could not quite extend his 17-ball 26 cameo to something substantial.
The hosts’ captain Mahmudullah scored a half-century but he battled to keep up the pace of his innings and it took a short cameo from Nurul Hasan that helped them post a respectable total.
The debutant Nathan Ellis registered a phenomenal record to his name on his international debut when scalped out Mustafizur Rahman, Mahedi Hasan, and Shoriful Islam on three consecutive balls to claim a hattrick. However, the feat came very late in the piece for Australia to have any say on Bangladesh’s batting efforts.
The series has gone to Bangladesh and Australia have been handed a harsh reality check about their preparations leading up to an all-important World T20 in the UAE later this year.