When you don’t play it is very hard to say if you’re in form or out of form – Chandika Hathurasingha
Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurasingha said that the country’s leading left-arm fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman has been given a chance to showcase his abilities to secure his spot in the playing eleven.
Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurasingha said that the country’s leading left-arm fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman has been given a chance to showcase his abilities to secure his spot in the playing eleven.
The left-arm fast bowler, who was picked by Hathurasingha after observing him in the nets, was considered to be an automatic choice in the national team’s white-ball format since making his debut barring injuries.
However, that wasn’t the case during the home series against Ireland as he was given a break after the first match of the three-match ODI series and didn’t return for the final T20I.
In the recent past Mustafizur’s performance had been a major concern for the Bangladesh team management, and his failure to play regularly for Delhi Capitals in the ongoing Indian Premier League only served to highlight the fact that the pacer needs to step it up to keep his place in Bangladesh’s white-ball format while the emergence of other pace bowlers like Ebadot Hossain, Hasan Mahmud, and Taskin Ahmed only makes the competition tougher for the experienced campaigner.
“When you don’t play it is very hard to say if you’re in form or out of form,”
Hathurasingha told reporters at the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium on Saturday after completing an intense three-day camp ahead of ahead of the three ODIs against Ireland, scheduled in Chelmsford from May-9-14
“He (Mustafizur) hasn’t played much and whenever he played here he did well, he did his job for the team,”
he said.
“So I need to see how he goes when he comes back to us (from IPL) and how he performs,”
he said.
Hathurasingha said that the openers should bat confidently and make sure they take full advantage of field restrictions.
“The openers need to maximize this field restriction. If you’re batting in the middle then you’re coming in different scenarios like sometimes four out, sometimes five out (fielders), so it’s important how you want to start. So if you don’t practice that the way you want to start, once you go into the middle then you’ll get sucked into the situation which we don’t want. We want them to have a clear mind of how they have been always regardless of the situation,”
he said.
Hathurasingha stressed extending that attitude right through.
“We’re going to play positive, aggressive cricket. It doesn’t mean that we will hit every ball out of the park. Aggressive cricket means that in everything we do, we do very positive, aggressive intent as well as decision-making. Also, it’s going to be aggressive whether the selection with field placing, whether it’s the type of ball that we decide to ball, so we want to give them that to go and express themselves,”
he said.