Mashrafe credits Hathurusinghe for his batting success

Jannatul Naym Pieal

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza is well known for his bowling as well as his leadership. But it seems like gradually he is turning into an effective batsman as well, for which he is nowadays being termed as an perfect all-rounder, who can bowl, who can field, who can lead from the from and now can bat in the time of need as well.

Though the Narail Express is not keen to call himself a batsman as he says, “My main job is to bowl”, he also knows his batting performance of late has been on a high. In the first match of his team’s BPL journey, he topscored with a solid 25 and on Tuesday, he played his career-best 56 off 32 balls to lead his team to victory.

And not only in these two matches, he shone with the bat during Bangladesh’s recently concluded Zimbabwe series as well. So what is the magic behind Mashrafe’s such success as a batsman? Mashrafe humbly credits Bangladesh’s national coach Chandika Hathurusinghe.

“Thanks to Hathurusinghe. All this has been possible just because of him. He has helped me a lot to grow better with the bat. He always wants me to do well as a batsman. I didn’t use to practice batting before. But nowadays a he makes me to practice with the ‘real’ batsmen,” said Mashrafe.

“Actually in the national team, we generally play with seven batsmen. But as I go in the middle at No.8, Hathurusinghe wants something from me too. He inspired me that if I can at least score 15 to 20 runs, that will be of a lot of help for the team. If I can make a partnership with someone, the team eventually will able to pile up a respective score. Since then I have been thinking if I could really contribute something as batsman,” added Mashrafe.

SOURCE: bdcricteam