VICTORIANS victorious, BPL 2015 Champions
It is three in a row for Mashrafe Mortaza. He has kept the BPL Title to himself as a Captain and distributed the success story to his team. Comilla Victorians won a thriller BPL 3 Final in the last ball of the chase, beating Barisal Bulls by 3 wickets.
Imrul Kayes was phenomenal from the start of the chase. He finished the first over with a four off Sami and then blasted Al-Amin for three fours in an over. Liton Das continued to be off-form and was out to a leading edge as he tried to flick it towards the leg. Shehzad joined Imrul and both continued to bring in quick runs for their team. They added 54 runs between them and while they have been adding up the runs, Imrul was down for a while with a muscle pull! He played the next 21 balls with this injury, and although he looked uncomfortable in the middle, he was looking determined to carry on.
He was on 39 when Shehzad departed for 30 and the score was 77-2 after 10 overs. The next over Imrul hit Prasanna for two consecutive sixes to bring up his second consecutive fifty of BPL 2015. But Imrul lasted not too long after the half-century was on the cards. He played a firm cut to a shorter and wider delivery from Mahmudullah, but straight to Sabbir at point, where he grabbed on to an easy catch. Mahmudullah got his second wicket and finished an excellent 4 overs, giving away only 23 runs. Kapali and Zaidi were in the middle and they looked to rotate the strikes initially.
Zaidi was setting himself up well, but fell short of his crease in the 16th over and was run out. Stevens walked in and Alok was slowly getting to accelerate the scores. But the penultimate 19thover changed the scenes in the field for some while. Stevens was out first ball of Cooper, who enjoyed bagging his 21st wicket and getting equal to Abu Hider for the highest number of wickets. Mashrafe came out, but for one ball only as he fell down to Cooper as his 22nd wicket that placed him to the top of the wicket-takers list in BPL 2015.
Things got difficult for the Victorians and they were losing it pretty helplessly, only then Alok Kapali stood up and hit consecutive boundaries off the last two balls of the highly eventful over of Cooper. It was now 13 runs required off the last over and Sami has been handed over the ball. First ball Hom was run out in trying to sneak a double where he only managed a single and had him return to the dugout. Tension arose and Kulasekera eased it off by sneaking a ‘bye’ at the back of the stumps.
Alok came into strike and how, two more boundaries in a row and only three needed from the last two! All eyes were on center pitch and probably Alok’s eyes were on the trophy, he snatched a double, which made it one off the last ball and he took the single, the Victorians were out running in the middle: They are the new BPL Champions! What a match to finish the tournament off, what a match to get a Champion-a Final indeed, a gorgeous one to be actual.
Alok Kapali was adjudged the Player of the Match for his wonderful batting at the death, keeping his nerves calm. Abu Hider, with 21 wickets, highest among the locals, was the Most Valuable Bangladeshi Player of BPL and Ashar Zaidi, for his tremendous all round performances throughout the third edition of BPL with 215 runs and 17 wickets, was adjudged the Player of the Series.
