It only took one tumultuous week for the Indian cricket team in Bangladesh for the so-called critics to behave as if there had been a national disaster of sorts. What’s more disturbing are the reports of a brewing storm in the Indian dressing room, which was believed to be at the pink of its health only a few months back after the Men in Blue’s strong performance in the ICC World Cup.
Suddenly, the talk is that of a probable rift between the two captains — Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli. After all, nothing sells in cricket more than the purported difference of opinion between two of the biggest names in the team. It’s always good for the television rating points, rather than going ga-ga over the heroics of a tongue-tied, scrawny 19-year-old called Mustafizur Rahman, who ought to be the toast of the cricketing world.
At a time when the sport is trying to find ways to shed the tag of being a batsman’s game, it’s difficult to say when was the last time a teenage fast bowler was hailed so much for his prodigious talent.
Pakistan’s Mohammad Amir — also a left-hander with a whipping action — comes to mind, while some are drawing parallels with the emergence of Ajantha Mendis of Sri Lanka as he bamboozled the famed Indian batting quartet in a home series in 2008.
It was a most revealing statistic that, when India finally pulled one back in the third and final match in Dhaka on Wednesday, they ended a 10-match unbeaten run at home for the Tigers — their scalps being New Zealand, Pakistan and now India.
The pertinent question that’s being asked in cricketing circles now is can Mustafizur continue to live up to the expectations that he has created?
Bangladesh’s bowling coach Heath Streak, the gentle giant of Zimbabwean cricket who has inculcated a great deal of discipline and craft in their ODI bowling lately, has already warned that the youngster from Satkhira district cannot be expected to take a five-wicket haul everytime he comes in to bowl.
The ‘Indian connection’ behind the rise of Mustafizur, Ranadeb Bose — a former Indian seam bowler from Bengal who has worked with him during a coaching stint in Bangladesh’s national cricket academy — feels that fears of his meltdown can be addressed too.
Bose, who admitted in a recent TV interview that his first impressions of the bowler was nothing ‘extraordinary’, feels the advantage of being in the national team is that the support staff can keep an eye out so that the frail youngster does not break down physically.
The task is hence cut out for the young man. South Africa, a team which prepares tactically well before any trip, must have let their video analysts loose on Mustafizur’s spells against India as they are due for a full tour of Bangladesh soon. Any ‘surprise weapon’, because there are so few of them now in cricket, is subjected to scrutiny and it will be no different with the bowler.
There will be, however, no dearth of supporters rooting for him.
