Bangladesh skipper Mashrafee bin Murtaza said he is yet to be fully satisfied with his bowling despite putting a match-winning performance in the second one-day international against Zimbabwe on Sunday. Mashrafee, who picked up two wickets in the opening game, showed a glimpse of his previous self when he bowled opening batsman Hamilton Masakadza with a slow off-cutter and followed it with a similar delivery to remove Vusi Sibanda.
In a near-perfect opening spell, he also added Sikandar Raza to his tally to rattle Zimbabwe and left them struggling at 3-40, a position from where they could never recover.
He finished with 3-34 but that only because he conceded 18 runs in an over of batting powerplay to Elton Chigumbura.
His exploits helped Bangladesh dismiss Zimbabwe for 183 runs in 44.5 overs to get an easy 68-run win after they put 251-7 on board.
‘I am 80 per cent satisfied,’ Mashrafee told reporters after the match in Chittagong. ‘I got the wickets, which is good but I could only bowl 80 per cent of the balls on the right areas.’
‘Against India and West Indies I was happy completely, whether I got wickets or not I was completely satisfied,’ said man of the match Mashrafee referring to Bangladesh’s previous bilateral series at home and away.
‘It’s not that I am not happy now, but the effort I put in, I think I need to be more consistent, which I feel that I am not able to do now,’
‘That might be because of a lack of bowling. There was a gap for a period. But inshallah it will come,’ he said.
Mashrafee led a three-pronged pace attack that was again below-par, though Bangladesh could still manage a convincing win thanks to an outstanding performance from the spinners.
Arafat Sunny claimed four wickets this time including three wickets in one over that ended Zimbabwe’s innings abruptly.
Mashrafee still backed his pace bowlers to come good in the remaining three matches of the series.
‘Al-Amin[Hossain] had a big mental pressure, he had to go through troubles, but he came back well. I think it will come back once we start playing.’
‘Same is with Rubel, who bowled well in the second spell. When someone is not in form, we need give him confidence,’ he said.
Mashrafee added that he changed the batting order as the team wanted to give the strike to their best batsman.
‘The reason was that our most in form batsmen are Sakib and Mushfiq and we wanted them to play the maximum overs,’ he said. Openers, played 26-28 overs so we wanted them to face the remaining overs,’ said Mashrafee
‘Sabbir batted well in such short time in the last match so we decided to give him more time in this match but he couldn’t perform.’
‘Hopefully he can do better in the future,’ he said.
-With New Age input
