Ripon Mondal once again showed his magic in the super over.Image Credit source: Rajshahi Warriors
The year 2026 started with the thrill of the Super Over in the T20 League. While South Africa’s SA20 league saw a Super Over for the first time, Bangladesh’s BPL also saw a thriller on the very first day of the year. The hero of this amazing match was the bowler who is becoming the superstar of the Super Over. This scene was seen in Rajshahi Warriors and Rangpur Riders in the Bangladeshi League, where young fast bowler Ripon Mondal led the team to victory with his excellent bowling during the match and then in the Super Over.
In this match held on Thursday 1 January in Sylhet, Rajshahi batted first and scored 159 runs losing 8 wickets. For that, Pakistani opener Sahibzada Farhan played an inning of 65 runs and captain Nazmul Hossain Shanto played an inning of 41 runs. In response, Rangpur could also score only 159 runs after losing 6 wickets in its 20 overs. For that, David Malan scored 63 runs and Tauheed Hridoy scored 53 runs. But the innings of both of them were a bit slow and then in the last over, Mondal completely snatched the victory from them.
In the last over, Rangpur needed only 7 runs and had 7 wickets left. Victory seemed certain but Mondal did not let it happen. This pacer took a wicket on the very first ball, while hitting a four on the second ball. But after this, only 2 runs were given in the next 4 balls, out of which Mondal got a wicket on the 5th ball and a batsman was run out on the last ball also. In this way the match went into the Super Over, where Rajshahi again gave this responsibility to this 22 year old emerging fast bowler.
Mondal had already done this about a month and a half ago, when in the semi-finals of the Asia Cup Rising Star, he took 2 wickets in 2 balls against India A and did not give even 1 run. This time also the Bangladeshi pacer did wonders in the super over and gave only 6 runs, while 2 wickets fell this time too. Rajshahi had to score only 7 runs to win and that task was completed with 2 fours in the first 3 balls.
Ripon Mondal was chosen player of the match for this performance. But the real reward was given to him and the entire team by the franchise owners. For this spectacular victory, Rajshahi Warriors Management announced to give Mondal a bonus of 1 lakh Bangladeshi Taka i.e. about Rs 73,600. Apart from this, bonus was also announced to the entire team. All the players and support staff of the team were given 15-15 thousand Bangladeshi Taka i.e. about 11 thousand rupees. Sahibzada Farhan, who did wonders in batting, and SM Mehrob, who excelled in bowling and fielding, were given 50 thousand taka each (about Rs 37,000).