Boom boom Tamim

SAVED THE BEST FOR THE LAST: Dashing left-handed opener Tamim Iqbal charges down the wicket to smite one of his seven sixes during a dazzling knock of 95 in the fifth and final one-dayer against Zimbabwe at the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chittagong yesterday. PHOTO: ANISUR RAHMAN

When Tamim Iqbal goes after a spinner, skipping forward, eyes fixed on the immediate left and right of the sightscreen, he uses his full body weight to hit the ball as hard as possible and as far as it is permitted. The shot, admittedly one of his main weapons in his early days of international cricket, is an act of violence when you're the targeted spinner, a cause for nerves if you are at long-on or long-off and a reason to be joyful if you are in the crowd waiting for it to, with a bit of luck, fall in your hands.
At the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium yesterday, the left-hander smashed seven sixes, five of which was in the general direction that batsmen like to call "down the ground".
The seven sixes broke his own record as a Tigers batsman to hit the most number of sixes in an ODI innings, taking his career count to 41 (Aftab Ahmed has the highest with 49 sixes).
"Don't worry, that record will be broken too," a tongue-in-cheek Tamim said yesterday. The local boy turned into the prime entertainer with his 96-ball 95, even his heart-breaking dismissal soon after reaching the nineties adding to the drama.
"But that's just me. It obviously feels bad but I'm not too concerned about not getting a hundred. But I won't say this is right. I will learn from it and try not to repeat the same mistake in the future," he said in the post-match press conference.
"Honestly, I get nervous when I'm in the nineties. I have to work on this because I could have scored five singles to reach the hundred but I didn't. I always love playing shots and I hit 7-8 sixes. That's my strength," he added.
Tamim also equaled Shahid Afridi and Saurav Ganguly in hitting the highest number of sixes, seven in all, in an innings in Bangladesh. While there is not much similarity between the Pakistani and the Tigers opener, the manner in which Tamim chases away the spinners is akin to the former India captain.
"When we talk about him [Ganguly] in the team meetings, we always say that in his prime, he just destroyed the spinners, left-armers in particular. Whenever he came down the wicket, it was a six," he said. On Sunday, Tamim's charge at the spinners looked a bit like those days in the late 1990s when Ganguly made spinners run for cover.
But without thinking too much about comparing himself, the local boy was more concerned to return among the runs after the injury lay-off.
"Definitely it was a welcome score. I feel a lot better now and hopefully, the Premier League will also be a good campaign for me," he said.
Tamim has topped the run-charts in the series, 162 from four games, a target he always sets as a personal goal and lets it be known.
Another 70 or so days later, a second World Cup beckons the left-hander from Chitta-gong who tormented India last time around. This time though, the target looks bigger and the method, more clinical.
HIGHLIGHTS
* Most sixes by a Bangladeshi batsman in an ODI innings - 7
* Joint highest sixes in Bangladesh soil (equaling Saurav Ganguly and Shahid Afridi) - 7
* Second highest sixes by a Bangladeshi batsman in his career (41), second only to Aftab Ahmed (49).