DHAKA, July 30, 2019 (BSS) – While Bangladesh’ bowling plan generally revolves around Mustafizur Rahman, the fast bowler lately showed the tendency to leak runs generously, which caused a huge headache for the team management.
Not only that he keeps leaking runs in abundance, he at the same time couldn’t give Tigers any breakthrough with the new ball. And stat showed all of his wickets in the last 10 matches before the second ODI against Sri Lanka came after 30 overs and most of them came in death overs.
Only in the second match against he got wicket after 20 overs for the first time in 11 matches.
But it is right he is taking wickets regularly. Fizz, as he is adorably called, has taken wickets in 13 matches from 16 ODI’s that he played.
This year Mustafiz took 34 wickets in 16 ODI matches. For the wickets his average of 28.14 is looking great. But Mustafiz’s economy soars to 6.77 which caused a headache given the fact that his economy was just 4.20 in 18 ODI’s last year.
He so far took four wickets against Sri Lanka in two matches but conceded 50 runs in eight overs in first match and gave away 75 runs in 10 overs in second game.
In World Cup too, he grabbed 20 wickets but conceded runs at 6.77 per over, which was worst economy rate for a bowler who took more than 10 wickets.
Bangladesh interim coach Khaled Mahmud Sujon has accepted the fact. He has talked with the left arm pacer regarding this and gave him some tips to bring back his past aura.
“At the start of the series, I have told Mustafiz that ‘ Remember when you were more effective? You used to bowl slower higher up the pitch that’s why success came. Now you are bowling at back of the length. That’s why batsmen are getting time to adjust and hitting the ball,” he said.
“Mustafizur has listened to me and working on it,” he said adding that this length is affecting Mustafizur’s economy rate.
“There was a time when he was getting less wickets but nobody was able to score against him. No team took that chance. They are also not doing it now but as he is bowling at back of the length, they are able to score against him.”
Khaled Mahmud believes only change in the length won’t solve this issue. He thinks Mustafiz also needs to add some variation too.
“You must add more variation. There are no other alternatives. Especially he has to learn to get the ball back in to the batsman. If there is no variation it’s difficult to get past high class batsmen.”