Little logic in Mosaddek exclusion
Having come in when Bangladesh were just 79 runs ahead after losing two set batsmen and with around two-and-a-half hours left in the match, Mosaddek Hossain played a resolute innings as he saw out 53 deliveries for eight runs and along with skipper Mahmudullah Riyad, helped achieve a draw in the first Test against Sri Lanka in Chittagong. Five days later, instead of fighting it out in the second Test on a much tougher wicket in Mirpur, Mosaddek was scoring 40 for Abahani against Kalabagan in yesterday's Dhaka Premier Leaguematch in BKSP.
The decision to replace Mosaddek was taken on the eve of the match on February 7 and he was released, along with pacer Kamrul Islam Rabbi and young off-spinner Nayeem Hasan, to play the DPL. The player who replaced Mosaddek in the batting line-up was Sabbir Rahman, a player currently serving out a six-month ban from domestic cricket because of his latest in a long line of disciplinary breaches: assaulting a young cricket fan during a Bangladesh Cricket League match in Rajshahi in December 2017.
It was learnt that the team management wanted quick runs on a difficult wicket, in itself a debatable premise, and that Sabbir was better equipped to do that. Mosaddek was also out playing a rash shot in the first innings in Chittagong and that may have irked the team management. Even if he did not make up for it with his responsible showing in the second innings, a swap of Sabbir for Mosaddek makes little sense.
The 'quick runs' argument leads one to wonder just how quick they wanted those runs as Mosaddek's strike rate in ODIs is 90.28, while Sabbir's is 93.1. That clearly indicates that Mosaddek is fluent enough to get runs quickly if needed. Moreover, the team management had thought Mosaddek's scoring pattern to be quick enough to be picked for six T20Is.
Much more importantly, Mosaddek has shown that he is a better longer-version cricketer. If his first-innings rush of blood irked the management, then Sabbir's history of regularly getting out to rash shots is no better. Sabbir got out for a three-ball duck yesterday and his first-class and Test averages (32.22 and 26.66) are decidedly worse than Mosaddek's (64.71 and 34.66), whose numbers indicate strongly that he would have been an asset in the current Test that Bangladesh are on their way to losing.
The other requirement of the team management was to have Sabbir as a specialist slip fielder after dropped catches in Chittagong. That backfired too, as Sabbir dropped two catches in two innings.
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