Miraz relishes ‘one of his happiest moments’

From Mushfiqur Rahim's majestic hundred in the opening Test to Liton Das's resilient ton and the pacers' lethal performance in the series-deciding second Test, there were a number of heroes who played pivotal roles in Bangladesh's maiden Test series victory over Pakistan.

But among them, one particularly stood out with his superb all-round display throughout the series. It was Mehedi Hasan Miraz, who did the job with both the ball and bat, helping Bangladesh clean sweep Pakistan in the two-match series, materialised when the Tigers registered a six-wicket victory in Rawalpindi yesterday to follow up on their 10-wicket win in the first Test at the same venue last week.

Since his emergence in the U19 scene in 2016, Miraz has repeatedly shown that he has the mettle to be the true successor of Shakib Al Hasan -- the best all-rounder the country has produced to date. Especially in the last couple of years, the 26-year-old has come up with some splendid all-rounder performances, mostly in Tests and ODIs, to justify the point.

In the opening Test, Miraz scored a brilliant 77 after coming to bat at number eight and his record 196-run stand with Mushfiqur helped Bangladesh take a handy first-innings lead over the hosts. Later, he came up with a four-wicket haul in the second innings to orchestrate the Tigers' maiden Test win over Pakistan.

Miraz continued his superb form in the second game as well, registering a fifer to restrict Pakistan under 300 in the first innings. And when Bangladesh were left tottering at 26-6, Miraz made 78 off 124 balls and was part of the rescue act that saw him stitching a record 165-run seventh-wicket stand with Liton Das to help Bangladesh avoid the embarrassment of follow-on and reduce the first innings deficit down to just 12 runs.

"I never thought negatively. If you do that, you can't perform well in this condition. So I just tried always to be confident," Miraz said after yesterday's win.

Having finished with the most number of wickets (10) and as the fifth-highest scorer (155 runs), Miraz justifiably took home the player of the series award. This was his second such accolade as he became only the third Bangladeshi cricketer after Shakib (5) and Taijul Islam (2) to have won the award more than once.

The last and only time Miraz achieved such a feat was back in 2016 when he took 19 wickets in his debut Test series against England at home.

"The team is very happy with my performance, they keep supporting me. This is one of the happiest moments for me," Miraz concluded.