Bangladesh’s Lalmatia Club deliberately lose match in protest of poor umpiring – essentiallysports.com

In a bizarre turn of events the Dhaka Second Division League match between Lalmatia Club and Axiom Cricketers ended under controversial circumstances. Lalmatia were put in to bat first and were dismissed for 88 runs in 14 overs.

In response, Axiom piled in 92 runs to win the match. However, the unusual thing about this match was that they achieved the 92 runs in a span of 4 deliveries. Lalmatia bowler, Sujon Mahmud opened the innings and promptly sent down 13 wide deliveries and 3 no balls. Every single one of the deliveries raced away towards to boundary without hitting a bat. Only four of Mahmud’s deliveries were legal ones and of the 4, only three were hit towards the boundary to seal the victory for Axiom. Mustafizur Rahman was the batsman to face the solitary over.

According to club secretary Adnan Rahman, the reason for Mahmud’s performance was because it was a mark of protest. Lalmatia believed that the match umpires were biased towards their opponents. “Throughout the league we were subjected to poor umpiring,” said the secretary. He alleged that the umpires did not even allow the captain to view the result of the coin toss.”They tossed the coin and said: Okay you bat. Very soon we found our team had lost five wickets for just 11 runs inside seven overs,”

Another official claimed that the reason behind the bias was that one of the leading members of the team had links to the main opposition political party. “This is very unusual … so many wides and no-balls,” said Bangladesh Cricket Board spokesman Jalal Yunus. “We have asked match officials to submit a report in this regard. Once we’ve received the report, we will launch a formal investigation.”