‘Didn’t change my mindset yesterday’

Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal said that he did not change anything about his batting which might have led to him scoring 158 off 136 deliveries against Zimbabwe yesterday.

There has been criticism of his slow approach in recent times and the fact that he was eating up a lot more deliveries to get set and not going on to score big runs. Yesterday however, he was seen playing with a lot more intent. Asked how that came to be and whether he was a bit confused during the bad patch, Tamim said: "Truth be told, I did not do anything different."

He played 11 dot ball in the first five overs where he faced 18 deliveries, scoring 15 runs yesterday. 12 off those had come in fours, including two back-to-back off Charlton Tshuma in the fourth over and Tamim felt that getting those two boundaries gave him the needed boost.  

"What worked in my favour was that I got two or three boundaries at the start. In one over, two deliveries were on the pads which I flicked away for fours. In the whole innings you will see that before I reached 100, I was not trying to play big shots, they were all cricketing shots. I wasn't trying to go down the wicket or anything like that, maybe only after I reached 100," Tamim said.

An attacking mindset had worked for him in the past, but having taken over the anchor role, he felt that him getting boundaries early led to him not getting bogged down.

"Yesterday the shots [early on] went through the gaps and the day before [in the first ODI] it didn't go to the gaps so I didn't get boundaries. Maybe the gap between balls faced and runs scored was equal yesterday and it might appear that I have changed many things but that is not actually true.

From over, 5 till 10, Tamim had only played 5 dot balls in the 20 deliveries he faced and compared to the way he played the first five overs, there was a big improvement in rotating the strike. It took pressure off his shoulders and enabled him to race to 49 off 38 deliveries. He said that the mindset was similar to what it was before.

"I have batted with the same mindset that I used before. Your intent has to be positive and I only want to bat with that kind of intent." Tamim, who got away 10 fours in the first 10 overs said.

It appears that finding those boundaries can help Tamim when the singles are not coming but it is by rotating the strike well initially can he truly unleash the true havoc that he caused at the end.

"I was trying not to get out as we had a batsman short. I didn't want to get out with a lot of overs still to play," he explained about the approach before adding 'I was taking calculative risk [towards end].'

"I tried to not get out at nets session. I have made some slight changes as well. It's a long process to be truthful and it's not like I could scored runs because of what I had tried in training. I have tried to better myself," he said. "But there is no change that i can actually talk about," the opener concluded.