Saifuddin, the Ganguly of Feni!
Image : Collected
|| CF Correspondent ||
Bangladesh were looking for a neat and handy pace all-rounder for so long in their squad so that he can swap the innings or match from the lower-down the order.
The national team all-rounder Mohammad Saifuddin filled the shoes and meanwhile established himself as a pace all-rounder in the national team with his dexterous contribution.
The Tigers initially tried to mitigate the void by Soumya Sarker, who gradually brought him back from the position because of his shaky place in the team along with his continued patchy form of runs.
Saifuddin, who is a left-handed batsman and a right-handed pacer, used to follow the former skipper of India Sourav Ganguly and loved to watch his batting and bowling in his young age.
Saifuddin made a surprising revelation about his pet name in his locality, stating that people used to be called him as Sourav Ganguly of Feni for following his playing style from his childhood.
In the early ‘90s, Ganguly used to be most of the youths icon, mostly for the players who used to batting left-handed and bowling right-handedly. The case is not different for the young all-rounder Saifuddin also.
“If I say from the very beginning, when I was young, our Feni was almost next to the Indian border. At that time if we move the TV antenna here and there we used to see a national channel besides BTV,” said Mohammad Saifuddin, who played 22 ODIs coupled with 15 T20Is after being burst into international cricket in 2017.
“At that time, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin used to open the bat and he also used to bowl. Sourav Ganguly also has a very good contribution with his bowling,” Saifuddin said in a Facebook live chat session with one of the leading web portals, Cricfrenzy.com.
“And the biggest thing is that when I used to play in the village field, everyone called me Ganguly. Because I used to bat with my left hand and bowl with my right hand. Ever since then, there has been a love for Ganguly, and if you say about recently, it must be Ben Stokes and Corey Anderson,” he concluded.
Saifuddin stated that he grew up watching Ganguly’s games. He always would try to copy him and play his cricket in his playing style. . To see that, he was named Sourav Ganguly by people in his hometown Feni.
Saifuddin also said though he used to watch Ganguly and follow him once, he currently follows the playing style of New Zealand all-rounder Corey Anderson and the World Cup winning English all-rounder Ben Stokes, who played some unbelievable innings for England that provided them an improbable triumph for them, those innings’ which stirred my nerves and changed him wholesale in his game.
