,”Mustafizur Rahman 2.0: Reigniting the ‘fizz’

A lot has changed for Mustafizur Rahman over the old two years. The left-arm pacer’s decreasing form became a serious about for national team management.

Mustafizur has been Bangladesh‘s best wicket-taker in ODIs and T20Is since his debut in 2015 with 127 and 84 wickets respectively although his form has dipped significantly over the previous two years.

Mehedy Hasan leads the ODI rankings with 51 wickets while Taskin Ahmed leads the T20I records with 33 wickets since January 2022. During this time Mustafizur has taken 37 and 21 wickets in the two forms.

Bangladeshi pacers Shoriful Islam and Taskin Ahmed have remove the most wickets in ODIs and T20Is. During this time. Mustafizur’s inability to conjure magic in the middle frequently jeopardized his spot in the national team.

Since Hathurusingha revealed that Fizz is no longer an automatic option before of the home series against Ireland, this subject has been raised several times throughout their international games. Understandably, this generated suspicions about the cutter-master’s skill, and his frequent appearances in and out of the white-ball playing XIs only confirmed that his position was not assured, as it had been in the past.

The Chennai Super Kings’ choice to include Mustafizur in their roster for the present Indian Premier League was surprising, to say the least, given his previous record. We assumed that he was chosen as a backup for Matheesha Pathirana.

Mustafizur appeared to be well aware that it was make or break time for him, and he took advantage of the chance by taking four wickets in his CSK debut due to Pathirana’s injury.

Fizz’s IPL performance, however, did not surprise former Bangladesh speed bowling coach Allan Donald. He worked closely with him until the previous World Cup before leaving the position.

I believe that from observing Mustafizur, he has gained confidence in his stock delivery abilities. I’m referring to his delivery rate, not simply his variety, which he excels at. I believe Mustafizur’s rhythm is better than ever. He appears to be extremely well-balanced. One thing that strikes out is that he appears to be enjoying his cricket. However, if I had to start from the beginning, rhythm is key when the ball comes out and has pace on it. He acquired shape on the ball. That’s one thing he was trying to adopt back in Bangladesh. There everyone was wondering what was going on (with him).

“He lacked trust in his stock deliveries, which involved swinging the ball into righties and away from lefties. Confidence to swing the ball away from right-handers and back into left-handers when needed. That’s the first thing I’m looking for, and I believe a lot of people default to slower ball or off-pace deliveries because they’re not sure how it’s coming out and when there’s supposed to be pace on, if you see what I mean,” he added.

“When Mustafizur bowls properly and at a decent tempo, he swings the ball late. He began to show in the World Cup. Albeit not consistently, it was happening at training. It was the first sign when I said Fizz is looking a lot better, and that slower ball, as I said, is just so in control of it right now and bowling beautifully. I believe he looks pleased and confident. He’s their (CSK’s) banker right now, which is nice to see,” he remarked.

“The issue I see with special guys who are very good at T20 bowling. Especially what Fizz is doing is taking the pace of the ball and it’s been unpredictable. More than 70 percent of 75 percent of the time he is going to mix it up. They tend to lose their stock deliveries. So it happens with a few bowlers, it happens with Broad (Stuart) back in the days, and a few others. I’ve seen it before and am  seeing taking the pace off consistently. So you don’t pay attention to how your stock deliveries come out. But I think when I was there. I would focus a little more on how hard he works on his stock ball on pace ball,” he said.

” tells you every single time that’s how you operate in the middle. I would be very hard on him to practice swinging the ball consistently. So that he doesn’t…. he had a wrist issue and a release issue we picked up in New Zealand. His slower ball was coming out of the side of the hand and did not go wrong. So I think I’d be more mindful of the fact to remind him of the World Cup in the United States and the West Indies. He should concentrate more on his on-pace ball during training to make sure that late swing doesn’t go. You’re not just tuned mentally to bowl cutters and slower balls” and whatever, if you understand,” he added.