Among the on-field activities which get criticised the most in Bangladesh test cricket, Mominul Haque’s captaincy has to be on the top of the list.
After every single game, the post mortem report of his captaincy comes negative. The frustration of fans keeps growing every time.
The fans cannot be blamed for this. After getting the test captaincy in 2019 from Shakib, Bangladesh– under the captaincy of Mominl Haque, never showed any potential.
In the 11 matches that he captained, Bangladesh managed to win only 2, both of which were against Zimbabwe. They lost 8 and drew only one against Sri Lanka. In addition, Bangladesh suffered 4 innings defeats during his term.
Even after all these, Mominul Haque’s captaincy is the right way forward for Bangladesh in test cricket, considering the bigger picture.
The first argument for Mominul might be that his individual performance is quite decent. In these 11 matches, he scored 750 runs with an average of 39.47, with 3 centuries and 1 half-century. A captain who is performing has always been a hard find for Bangladesh cricket. So, Mominul makes a strong case here.
Also, with all the senior players nearing the end of their careers, Bangladesh needs someone to move forward. Mominul, without any doubt, is the best performer of Bangladesh in test cricket after the big 5.
But the issue of which Mominul’s captaincy is the first step of solving is the deep-rooted rotten culture of our cricket. A tainted way of seeing test cricket in our country.
After the majestic 7-wicket haul by Taijul against Pakistan at Mirpur, the media flooded with the story that how brilliant and consistently Taijul performs, which was rare considering Taijul being a test specialist.
This has been the problem in our cricket. Our test specialist players or test mentality players very often do not receive the necessary evaluation. Another example of this would be an incident back in 2019.
In that year, BCB introduced the central contract system for the players after a few years. In that contract, Soumya was not included at first, which was an absurd decision by BCB. Because Soumya was among the players with the most caps that year. However, being subjected to the heavy criticism of the media, BCB included Soumya in the contract.
And as usual, they covered up one absurd incident with another. They included Soumya Sarkar in a higher pay scale than Mominul Haque, who was the test captain then.
That’s usually the place of our test specialist players. A player who was not even in the contract was handed a higher pay scale than the captain.
As a result, no player in our country really wants to be a test player. Because they neither get the recognition nor the reward for their performances. Those who are playing are doing so because they don’t have prominence in white-ball cricket.
But given the course of modern era cricket, some test specialist players in the team are a must to do well in test cricket. And to create that core, Bangladesh need to find players who are ready to dedicate themselves to test cricket.
One way to do this is giving them a higher pay scale, a technique which England follows with Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad and India follows with Cheteshwar Pujara. But for some unknown reasons, BCB seems reluctant to do that.
Another way is to reward their performances and effort, like giving them the captaincy. In this process, those players can believe that their efforts will be recognised.
If this message can be sent to the age level cricketers that performing regularly in tests can earn you the test captaincy and other recognitions, more players of the new generation will focus on test cricket.
Mominul Haque’s captaincy might not be the best thing at present. But it can be one of the best things for the future.
