It has come to the point of irritation now. The constant, meaningless, clueless, toothless cutters and slowers, which the batters pick up like a lolly and smash boundaries, are not what anyone loves to see.
That’s the story of Mustafizur Rahman in short in recent days. However, people following Bangladesh for the past year won’t be much surprised by it. Overall, Bangladesh’s bowling at death overs has been extremely poor recently.
And one of the key reasons for this is easily Mustafizur Rahman. The tested soldier to finish it off for Bangladesh has been quite off lately in the death overs.
Since the last T20 World Cup, Bangladesh’s economy in overs 16-20 is 10.43. They could manage only 19 wickets in this time.
Meanwhile, Mustafizur’s economy, in such overs in the same period, is 10.81, managing only two wickets.
He averaged almost 60 and a strike rate of around 33. These are never the numbers of a top bowler. And as it verdicts, Mustafiz has not been one.
When renowned journalist Deb Chowdhury claimed on his Facebook page, “Forget Mustafiz, he is never coming back,” it sparked anger among the fans.
Because the downfall of Mustafizur Rahman is not what anyone could contemplate. But what Deb Chowdhury meant was that the version of Mustafiz, which dominated the pitch, is not coming back, at least not in the way things are going.
The mass people and, to some extent, board members couldn’t understand it then. However, one person who didn’t fail to do so was the then bowling coach Ottis Gibson.
He rightly observed that Mustafiz had little variation in his bowling, and it was reducing day by day since his debut.
As a result, he was becoming more predictable and less effective.
So in the practice session of last World T20, he tried to add another weapon to his arsenal, which was the wide yorker to the right-handers.
As Mustafiz was still learning it, he couldn’t master the skill yet. Therefore, the execution on the field was far from perfect.
Everyone heavily criticised Ottis Gibson back then because they couldn’t see the bigger picture.
The idea was absolutely spot on. Mustafiz is supposed to bowl in the death overs whenever he plays for Bangladesh. The wide yorker is one of the most effective gadgets in the death over. Mustafiz mastering it along with his stock deliveries would make him more unplayable.
Unfortunately, fans and board members alike were blinded by his slowers taking the life out of batters on a shame of a pitch in Mirpur against the Aussies and Kiwis.
They saw Mustafiz shining as a supporting bowler in the IPL and thought nothing else mattered. These resulted in Mustafiz returning to the horrid display of bowling at the death.
