Mash to reach 50-match ODI captaincy
He follows Bashar, Shakib to reach the feat
Sports Reporter
As Mashrafe Bin Mortaza will come out from the dressing room to toss along with South African captain Faf Du Plessis for the third ODI, he will become the only third Bangladeshi captain to lead the side in 50 matches.
Habibul Bashar and Shakib Al Hasan were the only two captains of Bangladesh to toss for the 50 times for Bangladesh. Bashar led the side in 69 matches while before giving up the captaincy, Shakib led the side in 50 ODIs.
Mashrafe was appointed captain for the first time in 2009 during Bangladeshs tour in West Indies. Unfortunately he was injured on the first day of the first match, that ruled him out from the whole tour and that so far remained his last Test in the career.
To prolong his career, Mashrafe then gave up Test matches, making him only available for ODI and T20 matches. After Mashrafe fell into injury, Shakib Al Hasan led the side successfully in West Indies. However Mashrafe was back in captaincy in 2010 and led the side in seven ODIs before he was further injured.
Shakib was then appointed captain till 2013 before he paid the price of being stripped off from the captaincy because of the disastrous result in Zimbabwe series.
Mushfiqur Rahim was made captain in all three formats but failed to reverse the luck of the team. Nazmul Hassan Papon-led board then introduced a split captaincy for the first time in the countrys history, making Mashrafe captain in ODI and T20 format while Mushfiqur was given only the charge of Test team.
The decision of split captaincy came as good for Bangladesh as Mashrafe emerged as the inspirational captain of the team. He started with inflicting a 5-0 whitewash on Zimbabwe and then led Bangladesh to move into the quarterfinal of the 2015 World Cup.
This was only precursor to make him the legendary captain of Bangladesh. Under his inspirational captaincy Bangladesh then won three straight historic series against mighty India, Pakistan and South Africa.
However after the year of 2015, Bangladesh didnt get as much successful as it should get.
Still Mashrafe led Bangladesh to the semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy earlier this year.
In his 181-match career so far, Mashrafe has taken 232 wickets but as a captain in 49 matches, he claimed 64 wickets.
Under his captaincy, Bangladesh won more matches than losing, a unique record what no other captain of the country achieved. He led Bangladesh in winning 27 matches in contrast of losing in 20 matches. The two other matches fetched no results.
However in the milestone of 50th ODI as captain, Habibul Bashar got a victory when Bangladesh defeated Zimbabwe by three wickets. Shakibs 50th match as captain was against Ireland which was washed out.
Unarguably his hardest series of his captaincy career is the ongoing South Africa series in which the team is going through so many hurdles. For the first time in his captaincy career, Mashrafe saw such sort of disastrous defeats. South Africa inflicted a 10-wicket defeat to Bangladesh in the first match, chasing a target of 279, which was the highest chase without losing any wicket. This was Bangladesh first 10-wicket defeat in a decade, making Mashrafe captaincy career some sort of bleak. Then Bangladesh lost the second ODI by 104 runs.
Another crushing defeat in the third ODI is on the card given Bangladeshs form, but certainly Mashrafes milestone match as captain would boost the players to come out all guns blazing and regain some pride.
