It was the pressure of losing five matches in six outings that crept up on Mushfiqur Rahim as the Sylhet Super Stars icon cricketer and skipper wanted to be relieved from his duty. Pakistan Twenty20 captain Shahid Afridi, who initially did not want the responsibility, was persuaded by the team management during a team meeting the night before the match. And, the decision worked like wonders.
Sylhet kept their hopes alive in the Bangladesh Premier League 2015 by punishing Barisal Bulls by nine wickets after bowling out the joint table-toppers for the lowest ever BPL total – 58.
Barisal captain Mahmudullah was surprised during the toss but Sylhet did appear a compact outfit, something that was missing under the leadership of Mushfiq.
“As far as I know, Mushfiq said he wants to see a change in the captaincy. There’s a lot of pressure on him. He has to bat, keep wickets and on top of that we have lost two matches by one run and one by six runs. He wanted some relief. I heard about it from the team owner (Azizul Islam). Afridi had asked Mushfiq to remain as captain but Mushfiq handed it over to him,” informed Super Stars head coach Sarwar Imran after the match.
“We spoke during the meeting. He does not want to remain captain for the remaining matches in the BPL.”
He added, “We held a few small meetings. The new captain took control of the team. We decided last (Saturday) night that Mushfiq and Ravi Bopara will help out Afridi in the field, and that’s how it was in the middle (yesterday). Three of them will captain together, and officially the captain will be Afridi.”
It is nothing new that Mushfiq, who had captained Bangladesh in all three formats in the past, is an emotionally-charged person. A similar situation arose in Zimbabwe in May, 2013 when the wicketkeeper-batsman surprised the media and even his teammates by announcing his decision to step down as the Tigers captain a few minutes after his team lost the third ODI to Zimbabwe and with it, the series.
The obvious question was directed at Imran, “If this is pressure, then should he also be relieved from Test captaincy?”
Imran is not supposed to have the answer as he politely uttered, “That’s a different place, I do not have the right to comment on that.”
He repeated, “We needed a bit of change after losing five out of the first six matches. Let us see what happens.....We did not want it (change in captaincy). It’s just that Mushfiq said so.....”
