Litton Das top-scored with 53 not out as Bangladesh beat Afghanistan by seven wickets to avoid a series whitewash in Tuesday’s third and final one-day international in Chittagong. The hosts raced to 129-3 in 23.3 overs after Shoriful Islam’s best 4-21 helped them knock out Afghanistan for 126 in 45.2 overs. Tail-ender Azmatullah Omarzai provided some late resistance for Afghanistan to score with 56, his first ODI fifty. Left arm Fazalhaq Farooqi gave Afghanistan a glimmer of hope by bowling out Naim Sheikh for a duck and Najmul Hossain for 11. Liton and Shakib Al Hasan scored 61 runs for the third wicket to keep the innings stable and bring Bangladesh back under control.
Shakib fell to Mohammad Nabi after making a run-a-ball 39, but Liton, who hit three fours and two sixes in his 60-ball innings, took Bangladesh home.
Young Towhid Hridoy reached the winning frontier at Zia-ur-Rehman and remained undefeated at 22.
“There will be wins and losses… that’s what happened to us in the first two games. We tried to prove we were the better team in the last game,” said Bangladesh pacemaker Shoriful Islam.
“It feels good…. I had the support of the whole team, so it was a good performance.”
The tourists previously won the coin toss and elected to bat first, but never managed to get their innings going.
“The guys didn’t execute, they didn’t adapt to the circumstances,” said Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott.
Shoriful struck early after taking the field for the first time in this series, dismissing Ibrahim Zadran for one and Rahmat Shah for a duck in the third over.
Rahmanullah Gurbaz, who pulverized a career-best 145 in the previous match, saw one land in no man’s land, but soon beat Taskin Ahmed to go off for six.
Shoriful compounded Afghanistan’s woes by trapping Nabi leg-before, leaving the tourists reeling at 15-4 within nine overs.
“They played bad shots, the mentality was not good today – we kept losing wickets,” added Trott.
“We never had a partnership – you need that big partnership when rebuilding your innings from 15 or 20 for four.”
Hashmatullah Shahidi and Najibullah Zadran stopped the rot, but Shakib sent the latter back for 10 to prevent their partnership from developing.
Shahidi dragged one from Taijul Islam onto his stumps to end his patient stroke of 22 off 54 balls.
Omarzai helped Afghanistan pass 100 runs after the quick departures of debutants Abdul Rahman (four) and Zia (five).
He was the last man to be sacked and flied out to Naim Sheikh at long range from Taskin who claimed 2-23.
Afghanistan are only the second team to win an ODI series in Bangladesh in the last seven years, with world champions England being the other.
The victory in the match would see them become the first side to win all three matches of an ODI series in Bangladesh since Sri Lanka in 2014.
Following the ODI series, two T20s will follow on July 14 and 16 in the northeastern Bangladesh city of Sylhet.
(This story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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