Cricket World Cup: Bangladesh 6-match losing streak comes to an end

NEW DELHI –

Sri Lanka was eliminated from World Cup semifinal contention by Bangladesh and Angelo Mathews became the first batter to be timed out in international cricket on Monday.

Bangladesh won by three wickets with nearly nine overs to spare and ended a six-match losing run.

Najmul Hossain Shanto, 90, and skipper Shakib Al Hasan, 82, who stood by his timed out appeal against Mathews, featured as the Bangladesh top order finally clicked to reach 282-7 in 41.1 overs.

Sri Lanka was all out for 279 and propped up by Charith Asalanka’s brilliant 108.

Mathews wasn’t ready to face his first ball within two minutes of the previous dismissal — as stipulated by the tournament rules — after his helmet strap broke and he called for a replacement helmet.

By the time a teammate ran out with a new helmet, more than three minutes had elapsed. On-field umpires Marais Erasmus and Richard Illingworth told Mathews he was timed out. Shakib also appealed for him to be timed out.

“One of our fielders came to me and said that if I appealed, he would be out, it’s in the laws,” Shakib said. “I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, (but) I felt like I was at a war so whatever I had to do, I did it.”

Mathews, as a bowler, gave Sri Lanka a sniff when he dismissed Shakib and Shanto in consecutive overs to end a beefy 169-run stand off 149 balls between the two Bangladesh left-handers, but the tailenders hung in to see them home.

Mathews should have dismissed Shakib on 7 in the 11th over, but Asalanka dropped a sitter at short extra cover.

Shakib and Shanto made their match-winning stand while dew was making it difficult to grip the wet ball. They scored at a rapid pace before Asalanka made amends very late when he held onto the leading edge off Shakib’s bat.

Shanto hit 12 fours in his 101-ball knock before he was clean bowled by Matthews. Shanto made an unbeaten 59 in Bangladesh’s opening win against Afghanistan but followed with only 28 runs across the next six games.

“We had to bat deep, luckily we got a big partnership,” Shakib said. “Shanto and I applied ourselves really well, we would have loved to finish it early with lesser wickets (lost), but a win is a win.”

Left-arm fast bowler Dilshan Madushanka picked up 3-69 to be the leading wicket-taker of the World Cup with 21.

Madushanka, who picked up the wickets of openers Tanzid Hasan and Litton Das inside the batting powerplay, clean-bowled Musfiqur Rahim in his return spell, but Towhid Hridoy made an unbeaten 15 with two pulled sixes to get Bangladesh home.

Earlier, Pathum Nissanka and Sadeera Samarawickrama both made 41 runs each but couldn’t convert good starts and fell to Shakib’s left-arm spin. Sri Lanka slumped to 135-5 midway through its innings. Matthews’ exit in the rarest of fashions disappointed skipper Kusal Mendis.

“When Mathews came to the crease, there were five seconds left and he found out about the strap of the helmet. It was an equipment failure,” Mendis said. “It’s disappointing that the umpires couldn’t step in and make good decision.”

Asalanka revived Sri Lanka in a 78-run stand with Dhananjaya de Silva, who made 34. Asalanka raised his second ODI hundred off 101 balls. He hit five sixes and six boundaries before holing out in the deep in the penultimate over against seamer Tanzim Hasan.

Hasan took 3-80 while fast bowler Shoriful Islam and Shakib took two expensive wickets each.

“Charith played a brilliant innings, but we were 30-40 runs short,” Mendis said. “We had a couple of injuries (before the World Cup) and that was the reason we had so many newcomers. But we also made mistakes. Had we played better cricket, we would have a better chance of entering the top four.”

Bangladesh won its opening game against Afghanistan then lost six consecutive games. It moved to seventh ahead of Sri Lanka on net run-rate as both teams vie for a top-seven finish to qualify for the 2025 Champions Trophy along with host Pakistan.

Bangladesh faces Australia in its last round-robin game on Saturday while Sri Lanka will meet New Zealand on Thursday.