Rajshahi Kings stay afloat

Rajshahi Kings did themselves and the tournament organisers a huge favour by winning yesterday's Bangladesh Premier League match against the beleaguered Chittagong Vikings by the considerable margin of 33 runs, which means that the playoff line-up is still not set in stone and the remaining eight league matches will not lose their relevance for the time being. More importantly, the match also produced a breakout local performance as 19-year-old left-arm pacer Qazi Onik came away with superb figures of 17 for four from 3.2 overs on his BPL debut.

If Rajshahi lost the match they would have been out of the running for the playoffs, and with Chittagong and Sylhet Sixers also almost certainly out it would have meant that the remaining four teams would have had the playoff places almost by default. As it stands now, Chittagong is out of the running and Rajshahi have given themselves a lifeline.

Slightly diminishing Onik's otherwise stellar efforts in dismissing Anamul Haque, Stiaan van Zyl, Tanbir Hayder and Sunzamul Islam was the fact that Chittagong's batting, in the words of captain Luke Ronchi, was 'rubbish' in the endeavour to chase down a below-par score of 158. The chase was doomed from the start as Ronchi, Chittagong's most effective and consistent player this season, left for eight in the first over to a catch on the midwicket boundary off Mohammad Sami. Mustafizur Rahman, who enjoyed his first decent match this season, then got Soumya Sarkar to hole out for 13 in the sixth over.

Onik then came on for the first time in the eighth over and had joy almost immediately as Anamul, on 27, gloved a pull to keeper Zakir Hasan off a slower bouncer. Van Zyl stuck around for 29 deliveries to score 27, but wickets kept tumbling around him, and when he was sixth out in the 16th over with the score on 105, not much hope was left for Chittagong. Mustafizur got rid of Rayad Emrit in the following over, before Onik came back to clean-bowl Sunzamul with an inswinger and have Tanbir caught. He however missed out on a five-wicket haul as Taskin Ahmed was run out off the second ball of the last over to bring an end to Chittagong's sorry innings on 124.

Earlier, after choosing to bat first, Rajshahi put in a below-par performance that relied heavily on captain Darren Sammy's 25-ball 40, with three sixes and two fours. They were in trouble on 86 for four in the 12th over after Mushfiqur Rahim's dismissal, but a 69-run fifth-wicket stand between Sammy and James Franklin took them to 157 for six.