Former Bangladesh skipper Mushfiqur Rahim played a match-winning knock of 99 and he also got a great support from Mustafizur Rahman, who took a four-wicket haul as Bangladesh outplayed Pakistan by 37 runs and seal a spot in the finals of the 2018 Asia Cup on Wednesday with they will lock horns with India. They will now face India for the title for the second consecutive time, having made it to the finals in the 2016 edition as well.

It was a clinical performance by the Mashrafe Mortaza and his men Pakistan didn’t look in the game after losing the first few wickets. Batting first, Bangladesh lost their first three wickets inside the first five overs, but Mushfiqur and Mohammad Mithun (60) provided them with the much-needed stability before getting bowled out for 239 in 48.5 overs.

For his effort, Mushfiqur was named as Man of the Match and he heaped praise on Mithun and the way the youngster dug in after the initial slump. He said, “With the new ball and the quality that Pakistan had we knew we could lose the early wickets, but it was very important I kept believing in myself because I was in great touch and also Mithun, I thought he played really well. I just spoke to Mitun that we need a partnership and the wicket is really good, so we can catch the run-rate later, but we should make sure that we dig in the first ten overs.”

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With the wicket still good to bat on, Bangladesh needed a strong effort from their bowlers. Rahman and Mehidy Miraz did just as they stuck to a plan and executed it brilliantly to reduce Pakistan to 18 for 3 in 3.3 overs.

Describing the same, Mortaza said, “We changed our combination a bit today, normally I start the bowling, but today we changed a bit, we began with Miraz and Fizz. The bowlers have done a really good job, especially when we didn’t have the runs. In the end, the bowlers were brilliant. We can be proud of our fielding today. After a long time, we have seen this quality of fielding from Bangladesh. We still need to improve a bit of our batting and bowling in some part.”

For Pakistan Imam-ul-Haq (83) was the only bright spot on the day. He stitched crucial partnerships with Malik and Asif Ali but with no other contribution from the rest of the batting order, they could only limp to 202 for 9 in their 50 overs.

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Talking about their mistake, Pakistan skipper Sarfraz Ahmed said, “As a team, our performance in the tournament has been quite poor. As a captain and as a player, I have not done well too. We didn’t field well, our batting collapsed, we couldn’t take wickets in the middle-over as. As a team, we didn’t do well in any department. Our batting collapses were the main reason for our defeat in this tournament. As a bowling unit, if you see we made a good comeback, but them if we have to beat good teams, we had to be at the top of our game.”