Rashid Khan’s epic form in IPL might shiver Bangladesh down the spine but Mahmudullah Riyad is confident that their captain Shakib Al Hasan would come up with valuable inputs to deal with the leg-spinner.

Shakib is experienced to play Rashid Khan in the net because of being the part of same team—Sunrisers Hyderabad. According to Riyad, a shrewd cricket brain like Shakib obviously tried to understand as to what made Rashid so difficult to play.

Moreover since Shakib attended in the Sunrisers team planning session, he knows Rashid’s strategy to bowl to a particular batsman in a particular situation and his strength and weakness.

“We might get some suggestions from Shakib Al Hasan. He saw him from very close range and played him in the net,” Mahmudullah Riyad said in the team’s pre-departure press conference yesterday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.

“Shakib obviously could give us the idea as to how he (Rashid Khan) reacts in different situation and how he thinks when he bowls to a particular batsman in a particular situation.”

“These things are very important to read the mindset of a bowler. We expect Shakib to help us in this regard. I am sure Shakib reads and understand him very well after spending time with Rashid under the same rood over the last one and half months.”

Most of the Bangladeshi batsmen have the first-hand experience to play Rashid Khan in BPL but in the recent months, specially in IPL, he took his game in such level that one can term him as unplayable just. In this period he improved his game dynamically, much to the headache of Bangladesh players. Alongside him Afghanistan got another mystery off-spinner in Mujeeb Ur Rahman who also ignited IPL for Kings Punjab XI, showing tremendous performance.

“Rashid Khan is a very good bowler. He has been playing very well and improving his game dynamically. But we need to focus on ourselves only. Our preparation is good and hopefully we can deal with him perfectly,” Mahmudullah said.

“We respect Rashid’s quality and talent but we shouldn’t think that he is unplayable. What we should do is to read the match situation, trying to find the gap and treat the loose ball in disdain. I am sure we’ll get some chance to play scoring shots against Rashid and when we get, we need to capitalise on that.”

While most of the people don’t see any chance of Bangladesh in the three-match T20 International series against Afghanistan, Mahmudullah Riyad, the vice-captain of the team comes up with clear statement that their only target is to win the series.

“Our one and only target is to win the series,” Mahmudullah said, adding that they have clear edge over Afghanistan in both batting and bowling department, even though the Afghans have Rashid and Mujeeb.

“We are much ahead in terms of batting depth and experience. They have some good batsmen for T20 cricket and obviously they are strong in batting-wise but edge is on our side,” he opined.

“Our pace attack is better than them. We have the likes of Mustafizur Rahman and Rubel Hossain who are genuine match winner. In spin, we have Shakib Al Hasan, the world’s best spinner, we have Nazmul Islam Opu. Their spin attack is also very dangerous and it’s tough to compare the spin attack of both teams but overall, our bowling attack is richer than Afghanistan,” Mahmudullah remarked.

Terming the series against Afghanistan as ‘Challenge’, Mahmudullah said, the series victory against Afghanistan would boost them up mentally ahead of the West Indies series.

“Even some days ago, there was question mark on our T20 ability. We are able to wipe that out after the Nidahas Trophy. But still every T20 is challenging for us. There is ranking issue, there is chance to show our improvement. I think the series victory over Afghanistan would boost us mentally,” he informed.

Mahmudullah also informed that the absence of batting coach didn’t disturb their preparation.

“That doesn’t matter actually. We have Walsh, Khaled Mahmud in the practice session. A couple of days ago, I was not in comfortable when I was batting in the net. Walsh came to me and said you should rely on your timing instead of playing early. This suggestion helped a lot.”