Before the Zimbabwe tour he looked complacent and confident when I met him in BKSP. He told me candidly that his performance against Australian Bank Academy( CBCA) had raised his level of self-reliance undoubtedly and he was looking forward to do much better in Zimbabwe. There is no way denying the fact that a scintillating century against CBCA and couple of good knocks in the exhibition one-day matches propped our idea that Mushfique was a perfect replacement of Khaled Mahmood, the ex-alrounder of the national squad.

However, things turned into an upsetting finish for Mushfique after the tour had been over. He played all matches including the practice ones. Only the first ODI could serve him some contentment( he scored 31) when after a rapid collapse he hold the rope to seek for a partnership with Akram Khan. The rest two and the four test innings brought only gloom and despair. Why so?

" I could not get on and that was all happened there. I played some nasty shots in the test innings and got the payment accordingly. Besides runs are hard to find against them- they are too good for us. You can't just find a single gap where you can take a single with comfort. I contrived for power shots to get some quick runs on the board but I am unlucky, that's all."

Had he been promoted to number five or six, he could have done better because he feels much better there. " But they won't allow me to bat in a position where players like Aminul Islam or Akram Khan are apt to. Certainly it feels good to bat with specialist batsman on the other end than to bat with the tails," he added resentfully, " may be they are thinking to drop me off the squad and I heard some of them calling me only a slow-medium bowler while before the tour they kept calling me a batsman who can bowl medium pace. I don't have any answer right now-I will prove it through my performance. As for Zimbabwe, I really did bad and I have nothing that can stand any cause behind my failure."

We hope that this only genuine al-rounder of our team will soon be found with his rhythm back- before the Asian Test Championship begins.

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