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Bangladesh team has won their second official warm up match against the minnow Scotland by 7 wickets. The match was a low scoring match. With this win, Bangladesh will now go to the final stage of the upcoming World Cup Cricket 2007 with a huge confidence. Earlier, Bangladesh created the only upset in the warm up matches of the world cup defeating the mighty New Zealand by 2 wickets in their first warm up match. So, Bangladesh team is now fire.

Winning the toss Bangladesh Captain Habibul Bashar elected to bowl first. Bangladeshi bowlers made their captain’s decision right by taking wickets at regular intervals. With the tight bowling of almost all the Bangladeshi bowlers, Scottish batsmen could not go beyond 152 losing 9 wickets after 50 overs. One down batsman Navdeep Poonia hit the highest 32 runs for Scotland. The previous match’s bowling hero of Bangladesh, Abdur Razzak, took three wickets for 25 runs in his 10 ovrs. However, the veteran spinner Mohammad Rafiq took 2 Scottish wickets giving just 16 runs in his 10 overs.

Chasing a small total, Bangladesh got a bad start as they lost two openers within 7 runs. However, the worst news for Bangladesh is that Aftab Ahmed, one of the most important players for the team has been injured and retired hurt after scoring 19 runs but it is not sure yet if the injury is severe. From then on, young all rounder Saqibul Hasan and Captain Habibul Bashar carried on the innings comfortably before the departure of Saqib making Bangladesh 108 for 3. He played a good innings of 45 off 55 balls. However, with the help of Mohammad Ashraful, Habibul Bashar landed Bangladesh safely. Bangladesh captain scored the only 50 of the match and made 57 runs not out facing 87 balls. Mohammad Ashraful scored a stroke full 23 off 20 balls in which he hit five boundaries.

I am happy that Bangladeshi batsmen did not lose their nerve despite losing the openers cheaply for just 7 runs. This shows that Bangladeshi players are becoming matured. Now, it seems that Bangaldesh has emerged the real dark horse in World Cup Cricket 2007. S0, be careful Sri Lanka and India!