Former captain Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das stitched an unbeaten 204-run partnership to help Bangladesh fight back against Pakistan on Day 1 of the first Test at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram on Friday.
Mominul Haque opted to bat first, but Bangladesh lost the top four wickets for just 49 runs inside the 17th over. Then Rahim and Das added 204 runs for the fifth wicket in 413 balls before bad light stopped play with five overs remaining. The home side was 253 for 4 at stumps.
In the process, the 27-year-old Das (113 off 225) completed his maiden Test century. His previous best was 95 in the last match against Zimbabwe in Harare in July. Das already has over 1300 runs in 26 matches.
Veteran Rahim, batting for the 139th time in 76 matches, was 18 runs away from his eighth century. This is just the second time that Bangladesh have put on a partnership of 200-plus runs in Tests against Pakistan.
Coming in to bat with the top and upper-middle order decimated, Liton fought off the new ball, the spinners, a niggle as he approached his hundred, coming out of all of that unscathed to guarantee he would be out there on the second morning to take on Pakistan’s bowlers once more.
His partner, Mushfiqur, was instrumental in turning the momentum around in the early overs of the partnership, removing the sting off Shaheen Shah Afridi and setting the wheels in motion for a Bangladesh revival. By stumps, he, too, was closing in on a hundred.
The last two times he reached that mark, Mushfiqur had gone on to score double-hundreds. For Pakistan, pacers Shaheen Afridi, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf and off-spinner Sajid Khan shared the four wickets. But the much-vaunted bowling attacked withered as the day progressed.
Bangladesh, who lost the preceding three-match T20Is 0-3, fielded a depleted side with star all-rounder Shakib-al Hasan and senior batter Tamim Iqbal missing due to injuries. Limited-overs captain Mahmudullah, who hit a 150 not out in Bangladesh’s last Test against Zimbabwe, has retired from Test cricket.
