Taskin starred with the ball, Litton led the way with the bat, and comeback man Saif contributed a fine all-round display<\/p>\n
Bangladesh 138 for 2 (Litton 54*, Saif 36*) beat Netherlands 136 for 8 (Nidamanuru 28, Taskin 4-28, Saif 2-18) by eight wickets
\nTaskin Ahmed, Saif Hassan and captain Litton Das played starring roles as Bangladesh eased to an eight-wicket win over Netherlands in the first T20I in Sylhet.
\nTaskin took four wickets and Saif, playing his first T20I since October 2023, bagged his first two T20I wickets as Bangladesh restricted the visitors to 136 after asking them to bat. Saif completed his comeback with a quickfire cameo to support Litton\u2019s brisk half-century as Bangladesh won with 6.3 overs to spare.
\nTaskin keeps Netherlands quiet
\nMax O\u2019Dowd started well for Netherlands, driving and flicking Shoriful Islam for three fours in the second over. He then launched Mahedi Hasan, who opened the bowling, for a six down the ground in the third.
\nBut Taskin struck with his first ball, getting O\u2019Dowd to spoon a catch to cover off a leading edge.
\nNetherlands managed just nine more runs from the 2.5 remaining overs in the powerplay, with their only boundary coming through another leading edge from Teja Nidamanuru that just evaded a leaping cover fielder.
\nThen, Taskin struck again with the first ball of his second over, the eighth of the innings. Vikramjit Singh looked to switch gears and go down the ground, but could only pick out long-on.<\/p>\n
Saif ends Netherlands counterattack
\nNidamanuru counterattacked, pulling Taskin for a six later in that over before squeezing one past short third for four. That began a stretch that brought Netherlands 27 runs off just 11 balls, before Saif nipped the counterattack in the bud with his maiden international wicket.
\nNetherlands captain Scott Edwards tried to sweep the offspinner but couldn\u2019t get distance on his shot, and Jaker Ali ran to his right to take a brilliant diving catch at long leg. Two balls later, Saif had Nidamanuru holing out to deep midwicket.
\nMustafizur Rahman got on the board when a short ball drew a top edge from Shariz Ahmad\u2019s attempted pull to leave Netherlands five wickets down in the 13th over.
\nTaskin picked up two more wickets in his remaining two overs, and Netherlands added just 52 to their score over their last eight overs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taskin starred with the ball, Litton led the way with the bat, and comeback man Saif contributed a fine all-round display Bangladesh 138 for 2 (Litton 54*, Saif 36*) beat Netherlands 136 for 8 (Nidamanuru 28, Taskin 4-28, Saif 2-18) by eight wickets Taskin Ahmed, Saif Hassan and captain Litton Das played starring roles as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-500178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n