Towhid Hridoy buries ghosts of 2022 to reinforce his white-ball credentials

Towhid Hridoy won't like someone reminding him of his T20 debut. He infamously ran David Warner out and followed it up by a torturous innings (8 off 24) in a BPL 2019 match against Comilla Victorians. Comilla came back to haunt him again when he failed to get his team Fortune Barishal over the line in a BPL final three years later. 

In between these two matches, he won an Under-19 World Cup with Bangladesh. But his individual returns were meagre in that tournament - an average of under 30 and a strike rate of 70. In his next 30 innings after his T20 debut, Hridoy scored only two fifties and his strike-rate went past 140 just thrice. 

And none of them came in the BPL. He barely had answers posed by bowlers with international experience. 

His performance in the BPL 2023 came as a pleasant surprise - a 400-run season at an average of 36 with a strike-rate of 140. The wound of not being able to steer his team to victory in the BPL final was too deep to heal and it triggered a fascinating transformation. 

But for someone as young as Hridoy, it's not always easy to adapt. He had to bat at five in T20Is despite having scored heavily at the top-order in the BPL. And when his captain Shakib Al Hasan was dismissed in the first T20I against Afghanistan, Bangladesh found themselves in a deep hole at 64 for four. The required run rate was hovering around nine runs per over.

Bangladesh had eight successful 150-plus chases prior to the match in T20Is but they had never lost their fourth wicket at a score as low as 64. It was an unfamiliar situation and the onus was on two relatively untested batters - Hridoy and Shamim Hossain - against the bowling attack that has been the most economical bowling side outside the powerplay in 2023.

After the 12th over, Bangladesh required 76 off eight overs (9.5 runs per over). Someone had to take a chance and bring the asking rate down. Hridoy identified it would not be easy against the spinners and so he targeted Azmatullah Omarzai's medium pace.

"I told him Shamim if we can bring momentum in one or two overs, we can turn the game around. We managed to do just that. Momentum changed in two overs in between," Hridoy said in the post-match press conference. By the end of that over, the required run rate came down to 7.85 per over. 

But the job was not yet done. Rashid Khan and Mujeeb-ur-Rahman had overs left and the duo needed to play smart. They did that by not conceding dot balls and cutting down any unnecessary risk. Shamim got a lucky break against Rashid in his third over and finally got out in his final over. But they made sure there was no dot ball (except for the wicket ball) in Rashid and Mujeeb's final overs. 

In between these two overs, Hridoy and Shamim took Fazalhaq Farooqi's pace to the cleaners and by the time Rashid came to finish his quota, Bangladesh needed only 19 off three overs.

"We had a plan. They have the best spin attack in the world. It is difficult to run with them. Despite that, we have tried to take calculative risk as much as we can. I think every match in international cricket is challenging. Every opponent has their strengths. We executed as we planned," Hridoy said. 

Bangladesh scored 78 of their runs in boundaries, compared to 98 scored by Afghanistan, and yet managed to be the winner. Decreasing the dot ball percentage was the idea for the Tigers and Hridoy's innings summed that up nicely. 

The right-hander hit three fours and two sixes in his unbeaten 32-ball-47 which means he took 23 runs off his 27 non-boundary balls. 

Hridoy scored a 58-ball-68 against Ireland in May in a stiff chase but could not finish the match. But this time, he was there till the end. In that 2022 BPL final, Najmul Hossain Shanto, one of Hridoy's teammates, failed to keep up with the run rate. He learned the art and engineered a magnificent chase against Ireland. 

Now it was Hridoy's turn to do that. Shakib, who was Hridoy's captain in that final, sent him to bat at as low as number eight. Less than a year and a half later, he finished a game that Shakib could not finish. Hridoy said it felt good to finish such a game. The 18-month long wound has probably healed.