National team opener Imrul Kayes scored his maiden double hundred against North Zone yesterday to propel Prime Bank South Zone to a commanding position in the ongoing final of BCL. Imrul’s heroic effort, complemented duly by Mithun Ali’s unbeaten 111 allowed South Zone to take a mammoth lead of 446 runs at stumps on day three.
Imrul scored 204 off 266 deliveries which included 20 boundaries and 9 sixes. The last time Imrul reached the triple figures in an innings was in the home series against Sri Lanka in January this year and he dedicated his milestone achievement to his parents. However, the southpaw was also guarding against getting carried away with this Herculean feat.
“The feeling is really special. I have been trying to score a double for a long time because I was not getting the recognition as a top order batsman without a big innings. I needed an innings of this kind to be honest,” said Imrul to the media at the SBNS yesterday.
When queried what he meant by ‘recognition as a top order batsman’, Imrul replied that ‘century or double century has become very usual in the domestic circuit now’.
Imrul’s double century is the third in the ongoing season of BCL. Earlier in the tournament, another opening batsman Shamsur Rahman and all-rounder Farhad Reza reached the milestone. Imrul admitted of drawing inspiration from Shamsur’s and Farhad’s innings.
“You also feel the push of doing the same when you have others scoring big hundreds around you.
It creates competition and makes you feel that you also can do that,” said Imrul.
“It’s a challenge to score a double century and also a very big achievement,” he added.
Imrul caused his own downfall in the first innings as his poor shot selection saw him dismissed after scoring only 38 runs. This had urged him to score better in the second innings he said.
“I had plan to play well in the second innings so that I could recover from the poor showing in the first. Tried not to repeat the mistake and tried to keep the ball on the ground as much as possible. I believe this helped me to score big,” said the 27-year-old.
