South African batsman Faf du Plessis played a terrific innings of 83 runs (not out) off 55 deliveries to help his side Comilla Victorians in securing a 52-run victory against Chattogram Challengers in a Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) match on January 31 (Monday), at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, in Chattogram.
The former South African skipper who was not retained by the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) might have done well in successfully sending a message to the IPL teams ahead of the mega IPL auctions.
The South African batsman was the second-highest run-scorer of last year’s IPL tournament. He had scored 633 runs in the 2021 edition at an average of 45.21 and with a strike rate of 138.20.
A comeback
In BPL, the veteran batsman did not have a good start this season as he could manage to score just 8 runs in first two matches. But it did not take too long for him to get back his old form as in the third match of the event, the prolific right-handed batter smashed 8 boundaries and 3 sixes to score 83 runs. Along with du Plessis, their opener Litton Das played a fine knock of 47 runs off 34 balls.
Later, another South African batsman Cameron Delport scored a quick-fire half century (51 runs off 23 balls). Delport remained not out after hitting 4 boundaries and 3 sixes.
Eventually, the Comilla-side reached a total of 183 runs losing 3 wickets in 20 overs.
For Challengers, their left-arm bowler Nasum Ahmed picked up two wickets as another English bowler Benny Howell scalped one wicket.
The run chase
In reply, Challengers never looked confident enough to reach the target as they kept on losing wickets in quick succession.
Within first six overs they lost their 5 batsmen with a mere total of 66 runs on the board. Their opening batsman Will Jacks was the only batter who seemed to be in a fine form as the English batsman was the highest-scorer for his side (69 runs off 42 balls). Apart from Jacks, only two other batsmen- Mehidy Hasan (10 runs) and Mrittunjoy Chowdhury (13 runs)- managed to reach the double digit-mark.
For Victorians their spinner Nahidul Islam claimed three wickets as Mustafizur Rahman, Tanvir Islam and Shohidul Islam picked up two wickets each.
