Champions Trophy 2017 | How and where India won against Bangladesh

Coming into the match, Tamim Iqbal had scored a colossal 223 runs in three matches and apart from the odd failure in the game against New Zealand in which he perished for zero, he carried Bangladesh's batting on his own. With his performances, he had also superbly hidden the lean patch of the rest of the top order. In nine innings, including today’s match, Soumya Sarkar, Imrul Kayes, and Sabbir Rahman have scored a mere 86 runs and that chink came to the fore yet again and despite Iqbal and Rahim forging a 123-run partnership for the third wicket, the team lost the plot and could manage to hit just one boundary in the six overs that followed Tamim's departure. The middle-order wobble took a severe toll on Bangladesh side in the end as they failed to muster enough steam and finished with a sub-par 264/7. With the wicket didn’t have much for the bowlers to bank on, had the middle-order batsmen tried to apply themselves, they could have posted a competitive score. 

Due to being vertically challenged, Kedar Jadhav has a low point of release than any other Indian spinners and more often than not, that proves to be deceptive for the batsmen as we had seen during the home series against New Zealand last year. At Dharamsala, when then skipper MS Dhoni suddenly decided to throw the ball to Jadhav, it reaped instant success as Jadhav outfoxed the Kiwis by changing the pace of the ball while releasing the ball from the lesser heights. Today, it seemed like Bangladesh players didn’t expect Jadhav to roll his arm over as the settled duo of Tamim and Mushfiqur failed to understand the rare round-arm action and due to his continuous change of pace, it also played with batsmen's rhythm and both the set batsmen gifted their wickets away in the process. A little more patience could have helped the team reach a formidable total.

Taskin was recalled to the playing XI for Bangladesh's match against New Zealand and bowled with a lot of panache and hostility. On that day, he was easily the best bowler for Bangladesh by picking two important wickets in the form of Luke Ronchi and Ross Taylor. Going by that performance and his affinity to play against India, he was supposed to be the man for Bangladesh. But it wasn’t to be as the Indian batsmen exploited his atrocious lengths pretty easily. He was also the culprit of bowling short length balls to Shikhar Dhawan off which the southpaw managed to score 15 runs off just four balls. On the other hand, his Indian counterpart Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled with a particular plan. The way he set up Sabbir Rahman could be an example. After Rahman smashed Kumar over mid-off for a boundary, the latter bowled a slower, wider one outside off, forcing him to hit over backward point, only to be caught by Ravindra Jadeja. Objectively, this defined the gulf between both the sides in today’s game. 

The one thing that epitomizes Bangladesh cricket the most is their passion and gung-ho approach while locking horns with the big boys. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it was that spirit that took Bangladesh to the level they are now. But, after failing to muster a formidable total on the board, their cricketers lacked the spirit while bowling and fielding and were lazy on the field, to say the least. Despite knowing that how dangerous Kohli could be during the chasing, they didn’t try to set him up and as a result, the Indian skipper unleashed some vintage cover drives that had not quite been coming off his blade in the tournament so far.