DHAKA —Bangladesh left-arm spinner Taijul Islam insisted that he changed his bowling action with an aim to cement his place in all three formats of the cricket.
Taijul said the confidence stemmed from the advice of the spin bowling consultant Daniel Vettori, who believes the spinner is capable of establishing him as all format cricketer with the changed action.
Considered as the Test specialist, Taijul felt he now adapted well with the new action, even though it was not easier to change the action with which he bowled from the beginning of his career.
“With the previous action, I have a lot of advantages to land the ball in a particular area consistently. But with that previous action, it was difficult to continue in all three formats of cricket,” Taijul said here today.
“The level of diversity was little low with the previous action. Now that I have talked to Vettori about the new bowling action and he said I can play with the new action in all three formats. I changed the action by thinking about different aspects, bounce of the ball and variations. I am already getting the results too by bowling the batsmen. The new action is helpful as far as the bowing variations are concerned.”
Taijul has been a go-to bowler for captains in Test cricket for a long time. He had already claimed 114 wickets in just 29 Tests and established him as one of the most successful spinners for Bangladesh. But his ODI and T20 career is not that much rich even though he had a hat-trick on his ODI debut against Zimbabwe. He so far scalped 12 wickets in nine ODIs and while took one wicket in two T20 Internationals.
While it was tougher to adjust with the new action for a bowler, Taijul was such adamant to cement his place in all three formats of cricket that he worked hard to have already adapted with the action.
“I have personally worked with bowling. I talked to Vettori about my action, even changing the action in the middle. I am also bowling the batsmen now. The action has adapted to my body. Now bowling for two hours is not a problem,” he remarked.
“We had some personal practice, with each player having an hour or two of sessions. It has been an advantage for the players to have these sessions, to have personal practice, to be able to do their own thing,” he added.
Having said so, he felt his confidence level is now increasing to a great degree.
“It’s been two weeks since I started bowling batsmen. Confidence is increasing, after a while confidence will increase even more.”
The 28-year old left-arm spinner wants the Sri Lanka series to be held as the uncertainty looms over the series following the hosts’ harsh COVID-19 rules.
“It is very difficult for us to stay out of the game. We always like to play. It is very important to play the Sri Lanka series. If that happened then we would all be back on the field,” he concluded.BSS
