Seen for a while as a Test specialist, left-arm spinner Taijul Islam recently bagged an all-format contract for Bangladesh. This, Taijul believes, wouldn't have been possible had former New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori not come into his life as national side's spin coach.
Vettori motivated Taijul, who has played 29 Tests but only nine ODIs and two T20Is for Bangladesh, to focus on improving his skillset for the white-ball game as the ex left-arm spinner saw a few similarities with him in Taijul, another industrious and accurate tweaker, who also undercuts the ball from different angles at varying speed.
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"When Sunil Joshi was here (as spin bowling coach), I worked with him on Test bowling as my thinking was only there. When Vettori arrived, he saw my bowling and said like I can play in all formats with this bowling, all I need to do is some fine-tuning," Taijul told Cricbuzz.
"I did some work with him, especially on pace variations. That helped a lot. Now my pace variation and some other things are getting better."
The 28-year-old is part of the long list of white-ball left-arm spinners available to be picked in Bangladesh, but to ensure he gets ahead in the pecking order, Taijul is constantly working on his craft.
"There are lot of things to work on such as how the body position will be while making action look similar while making pace variation, body angle, where the hand will be, head position, ball grip, ball release position, all of these have been worked out or you can say I am still working on it," he said.
"Earlier I used to bowl with the same pace most of the time and the position and the speed made it easy for the batsman to guess if he wants to hit the ball."
"Tests are different but in ODIs, it was not enough with that bowling. The batsmen picked me faster one and played accordingly but now it is different. The variations have increased, so the batsman will think a bit now when playing a shot. I have tried it in Tests as well," Taijul added.
"Starting with the last tour of India, to this Zimbabwe series, I have bowled at a speed of 78-79 to 92kph. Previously the speed difference was not so high. In these places, I have tried to improve."
Interesting bit about Taijul's career is that despite his good performances at the domestic level, he was pigeonholed as a Test specialist thus far. "It is something like my second innings in the shorter version and now I believe that I can do well in ODIs," he said. "When I first played ODIs, I did well. Then I played a match at the World Cup (2015). Didn't do very well in that match and obviously, I was lacking."
"Those who formed the team, surely they know and understand better than me [why they didn't pick me]. I don't know the reason. It was not my decision. Maybe they thought I can't do it or I'm not ready for ODIs."
"I had a hat-trick on the debut, but was not against a big team (against Zimbabwe). That might have been as less important. Maybe I couldn't do well against the big teams," Taijul added.
"They might have thought that they would pick me up when I will be more prepared. I have no complaints on that, but now that they are considering me, I am obviously happy."
(Inputs from Cricbuzz)
