Mustafizur Rahman – The Cutter King
Mustafizur Rahman had caught the selectors’ attention with his 8 wickets for Bangladesh at the Under-19 World Cup in 2014, but it was in net sessions leading up to the 2014-15 season that he would work exhaustively on the cutters that have come to define his bowling. When unleashed on international opposition in mid-2015, there were few answers, as Bangladesh clinched their first ODI series victories against India and South Africa. Mustafizur Rahman plays for Bangladesh cricket team and Delhi Team in the Indian T20 League.
Mustafizur was equally impactful on his Test debut against South Africa, though it’s telling that he hasn’t improved on the figures of 4-37 he took in his first innings. In early 2016, he made a telling impact at the T20 World Cup in India, though Bangladesh went home early after MS Dhoni and Hardik Pandya sparked a dramatic implosion in a nail-biter in Bangalore.
Not long after, he was making the ball talk in the Indian T20 League for the Hyderabad team. His miserly spells and David Warner’s 848 runs were the prime movers behind the franchise winning the trophy for the first time.
Mustafizur Rahman: Recent Times
There were 5-wicket hauls from him against both Pakistan and India at the 2019 World Cup, but the intervening years have seen both injuries and loss of form. These days, he’s very much seen as a white-ball bowler, but the fizz off the pitch that was there in the first couple of seasons – which gave him his nickname as well – isn’t much in evidence.
He has had average spells in the Indian T20 League with Mumbai and Rajasthan, and the 2022 season with Delhi also went south after a decent start. But Mustafizur only turns 27 in September 2022, and it’s far too early to write off someone with his gifts. With the T20 World Cup to be played on hard and bouncy pitches and bigger outfields in Australia, those cleverly disguised bouncers and cutters could well come into play.
On his good days, with his height and a physique that wouldn’t be out of place on a rugby pitch, Ngidi can be nearly unplayable. India fought that out the hard way nearly 5 years ago.
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Mustafizur Rahman’s Personal Details
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- Name
- :
- Mustafizur Rahman
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- Date of Birth
- :
- 6th September 1995
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- Birthplace
- :
- Satkhira, Bangladesh
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- Height
- :
- 6′4″
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- Playing Role
- :
- Bowler
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- Bowling Style
- :
- Left-arm fast medium
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- Current Teams
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- Bangladesh, Hyderabad team, Mumbai team, Rajasthan team, Delhi team
Current Rankings
As of 22 Aug. 2022, Mustafizur Rahman is ranked 24th, 37th, 31st in the T20I, Test and ODIs batting rankings.
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- Game Format
- Test
- ODI
- T20
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- ICC Bowling Rankings
- 82
- 13
- 31
Mustafizur Rahman Career Stats
As of 22 Aug. 2022, Mustafizur Rahman has the below stats in the ODI, Test and T20I format for Bangladesh team.
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- Format
- M
- Inn
- Wickets
- Best bowling
- Avg
- SR
- ER
- 4W
- 5W
- CT
-
- Test
- 15
- 25
- 31
- 4/37 vs SA
- 36.74
- 69.10
- 3.18
- 2
- 0
- 1
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- ODI
- 77
- 76
- 134
- 6/43 vs IND
- 23.64
- 27.8
- 5.09
- 3
- 5
- 13
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- T20I
- 69
- 68
- 91
- 5/22 vs NZ
- 20.61
- 16.0
- 7.69
- 3
- 1
- 14
Mustafizur Rahman - Key Skills and Strengths
Never the quickest of bowlers, Mustafizur’s great strength when he emerged was his accuracy. He would invariably make the batters play and his subtle variations would do the rest. While it was the two types of cutters – one noticeably slower – that did most damage, he was also capable of surprising the batters with well-directed short balls. In white-ball cricket, where batters couldn’t afford to be patient, this led to plenty of mistakes.
Mustafizur Rahman - Awards and Achievements
When he made his debut for the Bangladesh cricket team in 2015, emotions were still running high after a World Cup quarter-final exit against India a couple of months earlier. When his bowling was instrumental in a first-ever ODI series win against India, Mustafizur quickly became a national hero. He made a promising start to his Test career as well, but has since hardly played the format, hampered by a variety of niggles. In the white-ball arena, though, he has been a star, especially in ODIs.
Here are some of Mustafizur’s achievements in international cricket:
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Only Kagiso Rabada and Fidel Edwards (6) have taken more wickets on ODI debut than Mustafizur (5).
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No bowler has taken more than his 11 wickets in his first 2 ODIs.
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Only Rashid Khan (44), Mitchell Starc (52) and Saqlain Mushtaq (53) have reached 100 ODI wickets in fewer matches than Mustafizur (54).
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His strike rate in T20Is (11.7) is the best for any bowler in the format’s history.
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Mustafizur’s 5-22 against New Zealand at the T20 World Cup in 2016 are the best figures in a losing cause in a T20 match between two Test-playing nations.
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He was named 12th man in the ICC’s Team of the Tournament for the 2016 T20 World Cup.
Mustafizur Rahman’s Indian T20 League Journey
By the time he played his first Indian T20 League match for the Hyderabad team in 2016, Mustafizur was a known entity to Indian cricket fans, who had watched him destroy their team in an ODI series in 2015 and star at the T20 World Cup days earlier. The Hyderabad team had forked out ₹1.4 crores for his services, and it turned out to be money well spent as Mustafizur took 17 wickets in 16 matches at an outstanding economy rate of 6.90. Hyderabad won the title, and Mustafizur became the first foreigner to be named the Emerging Player of the Tournament. After an injury-hit year, he moved to the Mumbai team for the 2018 Indian T20 League season. But his stints there, and with the Rajasthan team in 2021, were modest at best, and Delhi bought him at his base price of ₹2 crores for the 2022 season. He took 8 wickets in 8 games and those watching couldn’t escape the feeling that some of the fizz had gone.
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- Format
- M
- Wickets
- Best Bowling
- Avg
- SR
- ER
- 4W
- 5W
- CT
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- Indian T20 League
- 46
- 46
- 3/16 vs. Mumbai
- 29.67
- 22.83
- 7.80
- 0
- 0
- 6
Mustafizur Rahman: FAQs
Currently, Mustafizur has played for the Bangladesh national cricket team since 2015 and in the Indian T20 League, he plays for the Delhi Team from the year 2022.
Anamul Haque was the batter who got him to work on the skill during the 2014-15 season.
Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni.
Mohammed Amir was the bowler Mustafizur most wanted to emulate on the field, despite him having been banned for 5 years for spot-fixing during a series in England
Because he could barely speak any English, India’s Ricky Bhui acted as the bridge between Mustafizur and his teammates and coaches.