Mosaddek earns Shakib’s faith to be Tigers ‘go to’ bowler

NM Sports Desk: Dhaka, Nov-01,

Mosaddek Hossain Saikat seemed to have earned the faith of Captain Shakib Al Hasan to be the ‘go-to’ bowler for Bangladesh in the difficult situation.

Bangladesh have played with four specialist bowlers in each of the matches in this World Cup except against South Africa. Soumya Sarkar-Mosaddek Hossain worked as the fifth bowler against Netherlands-Zimbabwe but Bangladesh were also seen to suffer due to one less bowler. Still Captain Shakib Al Hasan is not missing another additional bowler due to his faith on Mosaddek Hossain’s capability to deal with the difficult situation.

Basically, the lack of a fifth bowler was more noticeable against Zimbabwe.

Shakib himself bowled the 19th over after the team’s three pacers Mustafizur Rahman, Taskin Ahmed and Hasan Mahmud bowled overs from 16 to 18. There was no specialist bowler for the last over. The captain passed the ball to Mosaddek and he repaid the trust by taking two wickets after being tasked with preventing 11 runs. Earlier, Soumya bowled the last over against the Netherlands.

He also got 1 wicket. Bangladesh won in the last over in both the matches.

While Zimbabwe and Netherlands were relatively weak team, India will pose different challenge as everyone knows how strong batting line up they have.

Will Bangladesh come up with an additional bowler, given that in T20, one or two bad overs is enough to get knocked out of the match.

Shakib doesn’t think so. He wants to consider Mosaddek as the main bowler as he stated that it would be wrong to think of Mosaddek as an irregular bowler.

“Look, if there was a deficit, we could not have completed 20 overs.

Mossaddek also took five wickets in one match this year against Zimbabwe.
Getting five wickets is very rare in T20. If you think of him as an occasional bowler, I would say that is wrong,” Shakib said.

Mosaddek has bowled 7 overs in 3 matches in the ongoing T20 World Cup. He leaked runs at 9.14 runs per over.

Although Shakib called him a regular bowler, he completed the quota of four overs only against Zimbabwe in the World Cup. He also bowled one over against the South Africa and two overs against the Netherlands.

In all, this offspinner has taken 18 wickets at an economy of 7.21 in 31 T20Is.

“He (Mossadek) might bowl better but previously we didn’t consider him that way. If you watch domestic cricket, he bowls four overs in T20 cricket,” Shakib said.

However, the team management has not yet thought about the combination against India in Adelaide. Shakib said that the best will be made considering the condition and the opponent.

“I have not really thought about the XI, but the combination can be made in many ways. Even then, we have to think about how we can take advantage with the resources we have.”

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