India A thrash Bangladesh A to clinch one-day series 2-1

Suresh Raina’s brilliant century set up the victory for India A

Suresh Raina’s brilliant century and Sanju Samson’s knock of 90 helped India A register a thumping 75-run victory by the Duckworth-Lewis method over Bangladesh A in the third and final unofficial ODI at Bangalore on Sunday. Chasing the target of 298, a couple of rain delays cut short the visitors’ innings at 141/6 of 32 overs to hand India A the match and thereby the series 2-1.

Sreenath Aravind celebrated his call-up to the India T20 squad for the series against South Africa picking up 2 wickets as the visitors were thoroughly outplayed in all departments.

It was India’s day right from the start as skipper Unmukt Chand won the toss and decided to bat first. He lost his opening partner Mayank Agarwal early on but forged a useful partnership with Samson. Chand played a watchful knock allowing Samson to play aggressive cricket at the other end.

Samson was joined in the middle by Suresh Raina after the fall of Chand’s wicket and the seniormost player in the side looked like a man on a mission the moment he walked out. The two added 116 runs for the third wicket at nearly a run a ball helping their side cross the 200-run mark in the 39th over.

Samson missed out on a well-deserved century as he was dismissed 10 runs short of his century, but Raina didn’t make the same mistake as he stepped up the assault in the final ten overs. Kedhar Jadhav and Gurkeerat Mann missed out, but Raina found support in Rishi Dhawan whose unbeaten knock of 26 from 15 balls helped India reach 297 at the end of 50 overs. Raina was dismissed in the final over of the innings after he had made 104.

None of the Bangladeshi bowlers could do the job of containing the scoring as each and every one of the six bowlers used by skipper Mominul Haque, including the hero of the 2nd one-dayer Nasir Hossain, conceded runs at more than five runs an over.

Chasing the target of 298, the Bangladesh innings got off to the worst possible start as they lost the experienced pair of Soumya Sarkar and Anamul Haque within the first three overs. Rony Talukdar too fell soon after to leave the visitors reeling at 24/3 in 8.3 overs. To make matters worse, a rain delay meant the target for Bangladesh A was revised to 290 from 46 overs.

Mominul and Liton Das tried to resurrect their chase with the latter especially playing aggressively, but both fell in quick succession failing to build on their starts. The pair of Sabbir Rahman and Nasir seemed to mirror the above pair in their approach with the latter playing watchfully while Nasir tried to take on the opposition.

Leg-spinner Kar Sharma accounted for Nasir and a further delay meant Bangladesh A had run out of time to stage a comeback. India A won the match by 75 runs based on the Duckworth-Lewis method.

Brief scores:

India A – 297/6 (50 overs) Raina 104, Samson 90; Shafiul Islam 2/56

Bangladesh A – 141/6 (32 overs) Sabbir 41*, Mominul 37; Aravind 2/14, Sharma 1/28

Result: India A won the match by 75 runs (D/L method); India A won the series 2-1