Zaheer's ten wins India the match

India easily overcame the Bangladeshi side to post a ten wicket win in the second and the final game of the Test match series at Dhaka. With this, the Indians won the series 2-0 despite pockets of resistance on a few days.

The Bangladeshis needed a good first one hour or so to be able to make a match of the game when they began their innings today. They had ended the previous day at 228/3 and were 83 runs behind the Indian total. Given the fact that the Bangladeshi lower order had batted well in the first innings, they would have thought that they had enough ammunition to set them anywhere around 150 as the target.

The first one hour passed by without any further loss for the Bangladeshis as the overnight pair of Mohammad Ashraful and Shahadat Hossain batted with great aplomb against both, pace and spin. The night watchman Hossain did afford a chance to the Indians but Amit Mishra failed to hold on to an easy catch as the pair brought the hosts to within 21 runs of the Indian total.

It was here that the things changed for Bangladesh. Harbhajan Singh finally managed to dislodge the partnership by getting rid of Hossain, caught by Mishra, and in the very next over Ojha got one to spin a mile and took an edge of Ashraful’s bat to the wicket-keeper to complete a good catch.

After this, it was as if the seeds of self-doubt made the Bangladeshis implode as Shakib-al-hasan played an unimaginable stroke to get out to Ojha, and the rest of them were no match to the guile and experience of Zaheer Khan. Khan ended with the rest of all the four wickets, including three in an over, to snuff out any minor hope that the side had.

India needed to score only a couple of runs for a win, and did just that to go 2-0 up in the series. Zaheer’s ten wicket haul in the game, which made him only the fourth Indian pacer to do so outside India won him the man of the match, and he also clinched the man of the series award.