Mushy at it again

Mushfiqur Rahim made 26 off 32 balls in a crucial match against Abahani in the Dhaka Premier League at BKSP yesterday and thus he could not even contribute enough for Mohammedan to at least avoid the embarrassing 260-run defeat. Interestingly, the 29-year old wicketkeeper-batsman left the captaincy to concentrate more on his batting.

Many eyebrows were raised when Naeem Islam went for the toss in the morning against the Tamim Iqbal-led Abahani and later the Mohammedan officials confirmed that Mushfiqur wanted relief from the pressure of captaincy to concentrate on his batting.

This is not the first time that Mushfiqur, who so far scored 480 runs in 13 matches at the average of 48.00 with one hundred and four fifties in the ongoing league, gave up captaincy. In December last year Mushfiqur resigned as captain of the Sylhet Super Stars in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) ahead of the team's clash against Barisal Bulls while in 2013, he quit the Bangladesh captaincy after they lost the ODI series against Zimbabwe but was later convinced by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) to continue in the role.

So, this obviously begs the question of how it will be possible for one of the country's finest batsmen to lead the Tigers in Test cricket, arguably the most high-pressure environment in the international game.

BCB split the national team's captaincy duties in late 2014, giving the ODI and T20I job to Mashrafe Bin Mortaza to relieve Mushfiqur from additional pressure. The decision understandably could not satisfy the little man.