Former Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza believes middle-order batsman Mahmudullah Riyad's ability to bail the team out from the toughest of situations is similar to that of India great VVS Laxman.
Mashrafe reckons it's unfortunate that Mahmudullah has had to bat mostly lower down the order for Bangladesh or else the right-hander would've had a much better record than the one he boasts of.
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"Mahmudullah is like VVS Laxman. He will go for days without scoring but when the team needs runs, he will stand up," said Mashrafe in an online chat with Tamim Iqbal, who recently took over from him as ODI captain. "If he had got the opportunity to bat at 4, he would have been a batting great in terms of statistics."
"Only because the team needed him to, because we did not have firepower in the lower order, he batted at 6. I have always felt bad for him but he has accepted the situation with a smile."
Tamim and Mashrafe have had fond memories of representing Bangladesh together. One of those is from that famous 2007 World Cup match against India.
"You had told me 10 days before the match that you would bowl Virender Sehwag with an in-cutter. How could you have known from before?" Tamim told his ex-skipper, recalling the moment he dismissed the dangerous Sehwag in the historic victory.
"Some days you have a feeling that it is your day," said Mashrafe. "The dressing room was charged because of the death of Manjural Rana (a teammate who died in a traffic accident just before the World Cup). We all wanted to win the match for him."
Tamim thanked Mashrafe for all the support when he was captaining Bangladesh.
"One day when I had returned to the pavilion after a bad day with the bat, someone had said ‘Make sure he doesn’t play in the next match.’ You had said ‘If that happens I will resign’," said Tamim.
Mashrafe remains inarguably Bangladesh's greatest captain, leading the nation to its first-ever ODI World Cup quarterfinal in 2015 and enjoying unprecedented success at the helm till relinquishing his post earlier this year.
(Inputs from The Indian Express)
