Semifinal hero Joy wouldn’t be selected to bat as a kid

From a very early age, Mahmudul Hasan Joy was keenly interested in tape tennis and gully cricket.

Every afternoon, it was a dash for to field for one thing and one thing only – cricket.

But in most occasions, there would be disappointment as the older players would get preference over him in the batting order and Joy would be limited only to contributions in the field.

The walk back home would be Joy's most important ones: it would be the time where he would set his mind up to do better and show the older players that he was capable of holding his own with the bat.

And that bat has now resulted in Joy helping his team and his country reach a cricket World Cup final for the first time.

With the whole country now talking about this right-handed batsman, his father Abul Barek has to be the proudest father in the world tonight.

Abul gave up his wish to make his son a banker like him and put his effort into making sure Joy can chase his dream of becoming a cricketer.

Abul now tries is best to make sure he watches every single ball his son plays.

In the semi-final it felt like the boy born in 2000 from Chadpur had come of age.

Batting at number three with a tricky target in hand, Joy took it upon himself to score the bulk of the runs – 100 from 127 balls with 13 boundaries full of class and calm.

The innings made sure that Bangladesh had reached their first ever final in the U-19 World Cup, something they had never managed to do before in 22 years of participating in the tournament for 12 times.

The likes of Mohammad Ashraful, Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal and Mehidy Hasan Miraz had also played in the U-19 World Cup but the previous best was the semi-final in the 2016 edition in Bangladesh.

Now remains one more hurdle, a match against defending champions India in the final on February 9.

En route to the final, Joy has batted in different positions in the middle-order.

In the first Group Stage match against Zimbabwe he scored an unbeaten 38 while batting at number three.

In the next match against Scotland, Joy – who considers Indian batting great Rahul Dravid and Bangladesh's premier all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan as two of his cricketing idols - scored another unbeaten 35 batting at number five.

The next two games against Pakistan and South Africa were uneventful for Joy with the bat as he scored a duck and then three runs respectively.

But that blip was more than covered up for with the bat against New Zealand as he played one of the best knocks of this tournament.

So far, Joy has scored 176 runs from five matches with an average of 58.66 in the World Cup and leads the run charts among Bangladesh batsman.

The Kiwis are an opposition Joy takes a liking to.

The last time the two teams played a one-day series in New Zealand, Bangladesh won it 1-4 and Joy scored 99 and 103 in the third and fourth match.

The innings he played in the semi-final showed tremendous maturity and discipline, where he played each ball to its merit and didn't give the opposition bowlers a chance.

"All I wanted to do is rotate the strike and stay on for as long as possible," Joy said in the post-match presentation, where he was adjudged man-of-the-match.

A mature performance from a young Bangladesh side, and history made, where the name Mahmudul Hasan Joy will remain a big reason.