Shakib takes over in times of change
When Shakib Al Hasan decided to give the Test leg of the South Africa tour a miss in August 2017, few would have guessed that the fallout from what eventually turned out to be a grim tour would have Shakib taking the reins of the Test captaincy for his second stint.
That, however, is what happened as the seven-match annihilation in South Africa has brought about an epochal change in Bangladesh cricket as Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan yesterday named a new captain and vice-captain for the Test side, bringing an end to the Test captaincy of Mushfiqur Rahim almost one month after it came to light that coach Chandika Hathurusingha had tendered his resigned midway through the tour in mid-October.
It may not be immediately obvious given Bangladesh cricket's recent results, over the past two months Bangladesh have lost their most successful coach and decided to do away with their most successful Test captain. But it seems that this is a necessary tumult, and the coup has not been bloodless -- relationships had reportedly soured among the coach and seniors.
Despite being Bangladesh's most successful Test captain, Mushfiqur courted criticism throughout his tenure for his defensive captaincy and it reached a head on the recent tour of South Africa when he won the toss and fielded first in the Tests, both of which were lost by handsome margins. The opinion in the board seemed to have shifted decisively against him, however, when he publicly lashed out at coach Hathurusingha and management after a poor showing on the field on the first day of the second Test in Bloemfontein.
"It's not as if there are absolute, specific grounds," Hassan said when asked about the captaincy change after the BCB meeting in Mirpur yesterday. "And even if there are, they cannot be revealed. Basically, we thought that there should be a change here; we want Mushfiqur to be batting at his best and we want him to concentrate on his batting. We want to free him of pressure. And we are not looking just at the immediate future; we are thinking about the next four-five years and it is a step to set things with a view to long-term plans. There will be changes in other areas too."
Mushfiqur had increasingly looked like a tortured soul during the South Africa series, and had even complained about the team management directing him to field in the deep during the Bloemfontein Test. After the Test he complained that when the team won, the credit went to the management and when they lost, the captain got the blame. Although Mushfiqur's average in his 34 Tests in charge was six points higher than his career average of 35.16, his captaincy troubles seemed to have affected his normally bankable Test batting in South Africa too. That he hit a century after Mashrafe Bin Mortaza took over the ODI reins just underlines the point Hassan was making about Mushfiqur's batting.
After Mashrafe's resignation from the T20I captaincy in Sri Lanka in April, Bangladesh had three captains in three formats for six months, with Shakib taking over the T20I reins. Shakib's appointment as Test captain yesterday makes him skipper of two out of the three formats and Hassan did not rule out a return to the one captain for all formats formula.
"It could happen, but at the moment it is difficult to say," said Hassan. "There are two points of view on this -- having one captain for three formats and three captains for three formats; we were working towards the latter for a while but we are thinking of the pros and cons. At the moment there is no chance of that happening as Mashrafe is ODI captain and we see no need to change that."
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