Bangladesh need to focus on hunting quality pace and express bowlers for their pace armory to win more games in any conditions in post- Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Mustafizur Rahman age, say experts.   

Bangladesh witnessed a significant improvement in their pace bowling during the tenure of the former head coach Chandika Hathurusingha under whom Bangladesh showed a glimpse of brilliance and improvement of the pacers that stunned all across the world.

The Down Under ICC World Cup in 2015 and the England ICC Champions Trophy in 2017 bore the testimonies of their progress, where the fast-bowling unit played a cog role behind the team’s envious successes, opine the insiders.

Bangladesh did the best-ever results in those two flagship ICC events in their 20-year international cricket history. The Tigers’ fans flew their green-red flag in the sky of Australia by mauling the mighty England team in the 2015 World Cup. Therefore, they replicated the second time in the Champions Trophy in the United Kingdom (UK).

But they failed to continue that feisty pace attack afterwards. The main reason might be not to get pace spearhead Mustafizur Rahman and Mashrafe Bin Mortaza in their forms.

It’s a great thing for Bangladesh that Mashrafe delivered his best despite his repeated surgical operations. Dr David Young, Australian surgeon who did surgery of Mashrafe on several occasions, expressed that he became astonished to think how a bowler can continue his service in the cricket field after doing so many operations.

Once BCB chief physician Dr Debashis Chowdhury told this reporter that they all drained the talent of Mashrafe by overusing him. He said they needed to give him proper rest and taught him the techniques how to give smooth delivery from the early stage of the career. He blamed the system for this.

Thereafter, when Mustafiz was explored by Chandika Hathurusingha, many thought that he would fill the void of Mashrafe in future.

It became true because he bewildered the veteran batsmen across the world with his mysterious cutters since then he became the cutter master. It’s ill-luck for Bangladesh cricket that his mastery has not lasted for so long.

Once again, Bangladesh lost a bowler of rosy prospect by overusing him. The way the teenage crackerjack came to national team and salvaged Bangladesh from the ruins but we had to see his fall in the wink of flash.  

He sustained injury on his bowling shoulder by which he rolled his ball at will and bewildered batsmen with his puzzling deliveries such as slower, Yorker, off-cutter and in-cutter.

His slower was the most lethal among the deliveries whose mastery can’t be detected by any batsman and walked back to the pavilion having bowled before understanding the motion of the delivery.

Still he is giving his service to the national team but he can’t play every game of a series or tournament because his injury recurs whenever he plays some more games on the trot.

As of now, many think that the left-arm bowler lost his natural bowling instinct after his surgical operation.

After that, none has come forward to take up the role that Mustafiz has done for the team. Taskin Ahmed and Mohammad Saifuddin meanwhile have come up but they didn’t consolidate their place in the team because of their respective injuries.

Regarding the matter, Dipu Rai Choudhury said, “We have seen Taskin Ahmed when he regained his fitness through Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) under Waqar Younis, he was named for the West Indies tour but he did not travel with the team as he sustained injury in the meantime.”