Under the sombre Lord’s sky, a 16-year-old walks out to bat for the first time in a Test match. He looks younger; commentator Mike Atherton says he could pass off as a 10-year-old. He is barely five feet tall; when he coils into his stance, he looks tinier. The English fast bowlers bounding in are giants. Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff are six feet four inches, Simon Jones six feet-three; Matthew Hoggard, at six feet-two, is the shortest of the lot. The famous quartet had blown the top order away, and had reclaimed the Ashes a few months ago.
But the teenager, with the face of an adolescent and going by the name Mushfiqur Rahim, doesn’t flutter his eyes. Three days ago, after a hundred in a tour game, he made a statement that belied his age. “Age and height are just numbers.”
For 57 balls, he justified the talk, blocked and blunted the foursome with the maturity of a seasoned sailor steering a rocking ship through a tempest. He scored only 19, and England handed Bangladesh a textbook thrashing. Yet, there was joy in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim celebrates after scoring century during the fourth day of first cricket test match between Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
His coach from childhood and now Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) director Nazmul Abedeen Fahim remembers the day: “The way he got behind the ball, the way he was reading the movement in the air and off the pitch against that England attack, was special, and portended a bright future.”
Nearly two decades later, Mushfiqur has fulfilled the prophecy of Fahim, who forsook the career of a tea estate manager in Sylhet for the rigours of coaching young cricketers in the country still finding its feet in international cricket. Mushfiqur is Bangladesh’s highest run-getter in Tests, owns the highest individual score for his country in Tests (219) and the best average (39.1). Over the last seven years, he has averaged 48.70; since 2020, only Kane Williamson (67.54) and Joe Root (55.14) command a better average than him (53.54). His average has spurted from 32 to 39.1 in this span. His powers of concentration have intensified — he faced 341 balls for 191 against Pakistan recently; his 175 not out against Sri Lanka in 2022 consumed 355 balls. His batting average when he has kept wickets (37) is better than those of Alec Stewart, Mark Boucher and Ian Healy. He rarely keeps these days, though it guarantees entertainment as well as expert glovework. He has featured in 20 of the 21 Tests Bangladesh have won, and in those he averages 55.
Yet, Mushfiqur barely enters serious conversations of contemporary Asian greats. He might not be the greatest Asian batsmen around, not in the league of Virat Kohli or Babar Azam perhaps, is still susceptible to high-class swing bowling overseas, but one of the most important ones of his time. The one often thrust to drag his team through distress, the one fated to shoulder the burden of expectations of a country that believes it has underachieved, be the source of stability among shifting teammates, a captain in troubled times, the embodiments of his country’s cricketing values.
Mushfiqur encapsulates the aspirations and angst, rage and resilience of a developing country. He is an everyman hero, without the celebrity trappings of Shakib Al Hasan or the culthood of Tamim Iqbal. He appears in unglamorous ads, of a biscuit brand where his co-star is a German Shepherd, of him spreading awareness of the internet in the countryside, innocently funny Tik-Tok videos when he throws innocuous under-armers to his wife. For all the awkwardness of a camera zooming into him, the peels of giggles compensate.
Study in contrasts
At times, he looks like a paradox. He instigates opponents as much as he endears. One moment, he is the human caricature of the naagin dance; the next he is chatting with opponents as though they were long-lost brothers. He expends all his vocal energy on the field, yet some of his coaches, like Russell Domingo, felt he was too introverted and nice. He values friendship, even though he has drawn flak for persisting with some of his close friends, like Mahmadullah, in the team.
His mentor sheds more light on his often misconstrued persona. “He is one of the friendliest persons you could come across. Down to earth, organised and hardworking. He is obsessed about his cricket, the typical first one to enter the nets and the last one to leave, and extremely serious about his job,” Fahim says.
He recalls a meeting just before the pandemic when Mushfiqur wanted to rediscover the joy in batting. Low scores had piled up, technical glitches had crept in, when he knocked on the doors of Fahim.
“The solution was simple on paper. He was not scoring any runs through the off-side. Behind the square he was, but not through the covers.”
sIt was bizarre because when he burst forth, Mushfiqur used to score heavily through the off-side. The debut knock featured a couple of gorgeous back-foot punches, with a nimble shuffle of his feet and crisp bat-swing, reminiscent of Wasim Jaffer. But over the years, perhaps necessitated by his fallibility outside the off-stump, he remoulded into a leg-side lasher. Flicks, pulls and slogs dominate his highlights package.
Bangladesh player Mushfiqur Rahim. (FILE)
“So the primary focus was to get him ticking along through the off-side, especially through the covers. Look how he is batting now and a few years ago. You would see the difference,” Fahim says.
He doesn’t detail the specifics, but the difference is evident. Mushfiqur’s front shoulder does not open up as much, and consequently, moves in a straight line when meeting the ball. The head and feet follow. The bat-swing too is straighter, not at a crooked angle as was earlier the case. The front foot glides out, the back-foot switch is frictionless. He has shelved the wishful stabs.
‘“Now he is more aware of his batting, and has worked incredibly hard to achieve it, facing thousands of balls in the nets, and is a joy to watch,” the mentor says.
The aesthetics of his batting are undervalued. The drives have an oriental insouciance, the flicks have rubbery elegance, the dabs through third man have a weightlessness. But Mushfiqur has an array of banal strokes, like the cross-bat swipe over midwicket, the bone-crushing scoop and a manufactured pull. Perhaps, the overload of short-form games had deformed his long-format purity. But at the back-end of his career, he has scripted a renaissance, and feels like that 16-year-old, albeit with a scholarly beard, under sombre Lord’s skies.
