Bengal’s poor performance in the white ball continues, as Bengal choked again in the shortest format. Mohammed Shami’s effort did not come as handy as the Bengal batters fell short of capitalizing in the middle order.
Shami took four brilliant wickets in this match and has had a brilliant white ball comeback so far. His continuous fabulous performance has given a message to the selectors with controlled bowling and regular wickets. Bengal fell short of 24 runs against Haryana in the do-or-die match, and as a result of this loss, Bengal got eliminated from the group stage of the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy.
Bengal’s horrible middle order made a scar on the team's performance
Bengal’s middle order has been a concern for years. The top order, consisting of Abhimanyu Easwaran, Abhishek Porel, and Sudip Gharami, is the team's only strong point. Karan Lal, who played some good innings in the tournament, has also been inconsistent. The introduction of new players has not significantly improved the team's performance in the shortest format of the game. The lack of power hitters and ongoing inconsistency have negatively impacted the team for a long time. The Bengal Pro T20 League has just started, and it will be interesting to see if it can help provide players with the experience and skills they need to improve.
Chasing the total of 192 runs, Bengal was only able to make 167 runs with losing all wickets. Abhishek Porel scored 47 runs, and Writtick Chatterjee scored 44 runs; the others were only able to help with bits and pieces. Captain Abhimanyu Easwaran only made 11 runs today. For Haryana, Nishant Sindhu and Ankit Kumar smashed 48 and 46 runs respectively.
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Shami's fiery performance
Mohammed Shami took four wickets for the second time in three matches during the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Overall, he claimed a total of 16 wickets in seven matches. Despite being rejected by the selectors again and again, Shami continued his good performance in both white ball and red-ball cricket.
Bengal is going to start its Vijay Hazare Trophy campaign against Vidarbha on 24th December.
