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Alex Hales’ hundred and Saif Hassan’s 49-ball 80 scripted a memorable victory for Rangpur Riders as they cruised past Sylhet Strikers’ 205-4 with eight wickets and six balls remaining in a match of six-feast on the opening day of BPL’s Sylhet phase at the Sylhet International Stadium on Monday. 

There’s only one occasion where a team chased down a target higher than this in the history of the tournament. 

Two teams combinedly hit 31 sixes, which got past the previous record of 29 sixes in a match in BPL. But Hales and Saif brought out the record partnership of 186 runs for the second wicket in the chase that helped Rangpur to register their fourth win in a row. 

Sylhet, who had lost their only match so far in this season to Rangpur, got past 200 for the second time in the franchise’s history thanks to twin fifties from opener Rony Talukdar (54 off 32) and Zakir Hasan (50 off 38) and then a late blitz from Aaron Jones (38* off 19) and Jaker Ali (20* off five).

All five partnerships got past 30s, and the one of 36 off 31 balls between Paul Stirling (16 off 16) and Zakir was the slowest one. But Jones and Jaker’s hitting mitigated that as well as Sylhet utilised the batting condition. 

Rangpur’s run chase suffered a jolt early in the innings as Azizul Hakim fell to Tanzim Hasan in the fifth ball of the innings without scoring.

Azizul is yet to score in the BPL after playing two matches and has three ducks in a row in T20s. 

But the smiles soon faded from the Sylhet bowlers’ faces as Hales and Saif started to build and then dominated them. 

A 15-run last over of the powerplay powered Rangpur to 54-1 after six. The influx of boundaries continued as Hales and Saif enjoyed the flat wicket, short straight boundary, and some ordinary bowling from Sylhet. 

Saif, who has now scored two consecutive fifties, revealed that they played according to their plans. 

‘As the wicket was good and the boundary is always like that [short straight boundary], we planned accordingly,’ Saif told reporters after the match.

‘When we last played here in the NCL, the boundary was the same. So our team plan was to get ourselves set and back our skills as we could.’

The wait for another wicket continued for Sylhet as the Rangpur duo batted for almost 17 overs.

‘The wicket was good. I tried to adjust after getting into the wicket. The partnership improved gradually. But I tried to spend some time as the wicket was good,’ said Saif.

Saif got to his fifty in 31 balls, and a hundred was on the card. But he missed it after getting out to Tanzim Hasan in the 18th over. 

His partnership of 186 runs with Hales is now the highest for any wicket while chasing in the BPL. 

Hales, though, didn’t miss out on the opportunity as he brought his second BPL and seventh T20 hundred in 54 balls after reaching his fifty in 31 balls. 

Saif then praised Hales and said that he could learn so much from the former English opener. 

‘He [Hales] tries to play according to the merit of the balls. We saw that his range hitting is good. He scored more than 13,000 runs in T20s. So there›s a lot to learn from him. I try to talk with him, trying to gather experience from him.’

Saif and Hales both hit seven sixes. Al-Amin Hossain and captain Ariful Haque both conceded more than fifty runs despite Ariful bowling only three overs for Sylhet.