It’s rare: Mashrafe losses his temper
Pic: Bcb
CF Correspondent
Usually a calm and diplomatic figure in Bangladesh cricket, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza hardly showed his anger or emotion in public place and if it is press conference he even is used to manage the harsh question with cool head.
Those who cover Mashrafe’s official press conference regularly used to see Mashrafe making fun, doing prank, jokes with even the junior journalists and keeping everyone LOL.
But that was not the case when he addressed a press conference ahead of Bangladesh’s crucial match against England at Cardiff.
A journalist questioned Mashrafe’s fielding tactics during the match against New Zealand in which Bangladesh narrowly lost by two wickets.
Requiring 23 off 33, with just three wickets at hands, New Zealand quelled the tension to some extent when Mitchell Santer edged one Saifuddin for four. If there is any slip, Bangladesh could have got Santer long before he held the nerve to sign off the match with a thrilling victory.
When it needed to be attacking with Kiwis in pressure, no slip in the place meant Mashrafe was defensive in his strategy.
The journalist in question reminded Mashrafe that and wanted to know how he would deal with the English side with such sort of defensive approach, specially when the hosts love to play all out cricket.
The question seemed not to go augurs well with Mashrafe as he responded harshly, which was unusual.
“England’s defense will be offense with the way they played the cricket. If you observe their cricket, you will see they play with attacking mindset even in critical state and they always want to take the score past from 350-400. We also discussed about it and know their mantra is: attack is the best defense,” he said.
The answer looked okay till now but later he went on say: “But in case of losing, I don’t know which will be defense or which will be offense for you. You people seemed to analyze the game better than us. When to attack and when to defend, you know better than us. When we lost the game, you changed the type of your question always.”
“But yes, for your information, we were never defensive in the match against New Zealand. Sometimes five fielders were in the circle. When we need to attack, we attack. And at the end, it depends on the bowlers that what type of fielding he wants. I have to set fielding keeping everything in mind. When Taylor and Kane Williamson were playing well, we tried our best, Shakib was bowling with mid-on and mid-off. I think you should analyze the whole thing and whole match. No need to talk just seeing the result of the match.”
