Mahmudullah comes up with a rescue act
Mahmudullah Riyad
|| CF Correspondent ||
Mahmudullah scored a brilliant unbeaten career saving hundred against Zimbabwe to save his Test and in the process lend his hand in leveling the two-match series against Zimbabwe at home.
The stand in skipper, who decided not to enforce the follow-on, came up with a captain’s knock to remain unbeaten 100, his first Test hundred in eight years, after their initial plan of taking a healthy lead looked to have backfired after the visitors came back strongly by reducing them to 25-4.
It needed someone to take up the challenge and Mahmudullah decided not to shy away from the responsibility that only indicated the character he possess considering his last few innings had already raised quite a few eye brows considering he did not score a half-century in last had gone 10 Test innings without a fifty before this one.
Not too many cricketers in Bangladesh saw this much transformation in his life than Mahmudullah had seen perhaps, starting his career over a decade ago with a one-day international in Sri Lanka.
Mahmudullah had to sit out of the next six matches before he got another game after scoring 36 runs on debut. He was never considered a good prospect for longer version until he scored four consecutive hundreds in first-class cricket in 2008-09, which finally paved the way for his Test debut.
Irony was that Mahmudullah made his debut in Test as a specialist bowler, though he justified his selection by claiming eight wickets on his debut against West Indies. His feat included a five-for in the second innings that played a big hand in Bangladesh’s first win overseas.
Despite his winning debut as a bowler, Bangladesh unsurprisingly wanted him to contribute mostly with the bat. Mahmudullah also took little time to prove his worth as a batsman, hitting a century and two unbeaten fifties in his first 10 innings, all of which coming at number eight. His 115 against New Zealand at Hamilton in 2010 carried lot of hopes, earning him a promotion up in the batting order.
He performed on and off since the innings but agonisingly could not repeat the feat for quite a long period. It took Mahmudullah eight years and nine months to score another century when he hit an unbeaten 101 against Zimbabwe in Dhaka on Tuesday as Bangladesh set a 443-run target for the visitors to win the second Test. Over the period many things have changed in Bangladesh team as they became from perennial whipping boys to a decent outfit in all three formats.
In ODIs, they are now among the top seven teams and Mahmudullah played a big role in this transformation too. Being one of the five senior players, he played some crucial innings in World Cup 2015 and ICC Champions Trophy 2017 to change the fate of the team. He also earned the distinction of leading the side, albeit for an interim period and also established himself as a decent Twenty20 cricketer during this time, earning calls from several franchise-based Twenty20 tournaments abroad.
But the one thing that did not change was his Test form, despite him getting countless opportunities. His lack of form in the longer format prompted team management to drop him from the 100 Test match despite being a senior member of the squad and though he returned back with some runs it never really solved his problems. Mahmudullah scored 122 runs in last 10 innings to complicate things further.
He came into second Test against Zimbabwe in Dhaka with an average of 7.25 in his past eight innings when he could score just 58 runs. Despite him being the captain of the side, Mahmudullah had to do something special in this match to save his Test career. He did go through some lean patch in his 10 year long journey as he did not score a Test half century for 11 successive innings from March 2010 till December 2011 while he also did not scored a half-century on 10 successive innings on two more occasions. Mahmudullah was under immense pressure coming into the Test match as he had to overcome as firstly he needs to motivate the team after their embarrassing loss to Zimbabwe put their image at stake and secondly he needs to perform as times are running short for him.
It seemed Mahmudullah knew he cannot take anything for granted as country’s two leading cricketers- Shakib al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal were missing from the playing XI and after they return back places need to be vacated to accommodate them and he was determined to seize the opportunity that only reminded the potential he showed upon his arrival in Test cricket.
Chief selector Minhajul Abedin told Cricfrenzy on Wednesday that it was immensely satisfying to see Mahmudullah making some runs that he believe was due for quite some time. ‘’I think it was a brilliant innings as we were in the back foot when he arrived at the wicket and taking his recent form into consideration we must hail him for his effort,’’ said Abedin. ‘
’We have always believed he possesses huge potential as a Test batsman but somehow it did not reflect if you take his performances in the longer formats,’’ he said. ‘’But today he had battled out against all odds and we are hoping it is just the beginning leaving behind his recent low scores,’’ he concluded.
