Pakistan vs Bangladesh, 2024 – How fast bowler Nahid Rana became Bangladesh’s latest pace sensation

“Bangladeshi fast bowler” is not exactly an oxymoron but the phenomenon is an unlikely one. Particularly if you look at the Test team in recent years, you’d be justified in thinking fast bowers were an endangered species in the country. Then came Taskin Ahmed’s comeback. And Ebadot Hossain’s stunning improvement.Most recently, there has been Nahid Rana, who made an improbable journey from a small town in the country’s north-west to the Test team.Rana rocked Pakistan with his pace and bounce during Bangladesh’s 2-0 Test series win in Rawalpindi earlier this month. In baking hot weather, in an almost empty stadium, the 21-year-old bowled like no Bangladeshi fast bowler has ever done, hitting 150kph on occasion and averaging 145kph for most of his spells, hurrying the Pakistani batters, showing the ability to extract disconcerting bounce from a difficult length. His four wickets on the fourth day of the second Test battered the home side. Bangladesh won the game by six wickets.

It has been a whirlwind ride for Rana, who was playing tape-tennis ball cricket with his friends less than five years ago and only got into a cricket academy after fulfilling his family’s wish that he pass his college exam.

He is now one of the most talked about cricketers in Bangladesh as they embark on their third bilateral tour of India. The hosts have reportedly brought a tall fast bowler into the nets to prepare for the challenge of facing Rana – likely the first time a Test side has taken such steps to counter a Bangladeshi fast bowler.

Rana is wearing a loose-fitting black and white shirt when we meet at the academy building inside the Shere Bangla National Stadium’s premises. It is a week after the Bangladesh players have returned from Pakistan. After a couple of days’ training, it is now almost time for the India tour, and Rana is tackling a queue of interview-seekers. He finishes a session with Bangladesh Betar, the state-owned radio station, while three other groups of journalists, waiting their turn, sit idly by.

The day before, Litton Das warned against complacency ahead of the India series, and requested the media not to talk too much about the Pakistan tour. But with Rana present in the flesh, you can’t not ask him about that spell in Rawalpindi.On the fourth day of the second Test, Pakistan had seven wickets in hand, and a lead of 74 runs. After playing some good strokes in the morning session, opener Saim Ayub was out caught at mid-off. Taskin Ahmed and hasan mahmudHasan Mahmud looked lively in their opening spells. When Rana came on, it was hot. He hadn’t bowled all that well in the first innings of the Test.Earlier during the match, Rana rang Alamgir Kabir, the former Bangladesh fast bowler, his mentor.

“After he bowled in the first innings, he asked me, ‘Sir, what have you observed?'” Alamgir says. “I said, you looked confident – so confident that it looked like you are bowling in the National Cricket League. He replied, ‘Sir, you are right. I was bowling confidently. I felt like I could blast them away like in the NCL.’

“I told him that he was either bowling too short or bowling half-volleys. It didn’t look like he was playing in a Test match.

“Taking wickets inspires me me more than bowling fast”•Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images

“There’s a difference between domestic and international batters. ‘If you stick to your lengths and stick to one spot, you will have a better chance in the second innings,’ I told him.”

With his third ball, Rana removed the Pakistan captain, Shan Masood, caught behind. Babar Azam went first ball next over, caught by Shadman Islam at first slip, who then dropped Mohammad Rizwan the following ball.

Rana beat Rizwan’s inside edge in the next over, just missing the top of off stump. After Rizwan pulled out from the next delivery at the last second, Rana pinged him on the helmet with a bouncer as he attempted a pull. Taskin had something to say from fine leg. A ball later, Rana removed Saud Shakeel for 2. Pakistan were 81 for 6.

The loud music in between overs broke the trance that Rana’s spell seemed to have cast. The press box he was bowling towards was abuzz. Someone wanted to know if “Rajshahi Express” might catch on as a nickname. Rajshahi is where Rana learned his cricket, though he grew up in nearby Chapai Nawabganj.

He bowled two more menacing overs in the spell, finishing on 5-0-22-3. His team-mates gave him a round of applause and pats on the back.

A Bangladeshi fast bowler had ripped out the opposition’s captain, their best batter, and their most in-form batter in three overs. In the city that not so long ago was home to the world’s fastest bowler.

Rana was a threat earlier in the series too, but this spell was the highlight, and perhaps the first time he qualified to be called a match-winner in Bangladesh colours.

When he talks about the spell a week later, in Dhaka, Rana is predictably shy. It takes a few follow-up questions to coax his thoughts out of him.

“Yes, that was a good spell,” he says. “I think it was my best time in the four innings in Pakistan.” He says he worked hard for three months for the Pakistan series, doing everything he needed to keep his fitness and pace high.

“Taking wickets definitely inspires me. It inspires me more than bowling fast.

Rana trains in Chennai. “If you have good fitness, you can take good decisions”•Mahesh Kumar A/Associated Press

The series win was Bangladesh’s second overseas since becoming a Full Member nation in 2000. Rana’s pace was the surprise ingredient, coming as it did from a team that traditionally relies on its spinners. Over about the last four years, Bangladesh’s pace attack have become match-winners in both red- and white-ball cricket. Taskin’s comeback was a catalyst, followed by Shoriful Islam’s inclusion after he was in the Under-19 World Cup-winning side. Ebadot’s vast improvement, Mustafizur Rahman’s steady progress, and intermittent bursts of excellence from Hasan Mahmud and Tanzim Hasan Sakib have been highlights of the continued evolution of Bangladeshi fast bowling. Rana’s rapid rise from rural obscurity to playing a role in a Test series win overseas has been the cherry on top.

Sometime around the end of the monsoon in 2019, Alamgir was looking for ways to keep his new students engaged on a rainy day at the Clemon Cricket Academy in Rajshahi. He arranged a taped-tennis ball match in which the coaches played alongside the students.

“I saw that the wicketkeeper was having a hard time keeping to one of the pace bowlers,” he says. “He couldn’t grab three balls in a row. I said, what’s going on, why can’t you hold it properly? I took the wicketkeeper’s position myself, but I couldn’t hold on to the boy’s deliveries either.

That was the first time Alamgir met Rana, who had come to Rajshahi from his village in Chapai Nawabganj.

“From the next day, I kept Rana in the senior students’ group,” Alamgir says. “He had a haphazard action, quite natural for a newcomer, but I quickly found out he was receptive. If I showed him something, he could do it. I told our head coach [Khaled Mashud] Pilot bhai that I have a feeling that we have someone special on our hands. He is a god-gifted cricketer. We should give him special training,” Alamgir remembers saying.

Rana played age-group matches and was even considered for the Under-19 World Cup squad for the 2020 tournament in South Africa, though he eventually was a standby. After the pandemic, he made his first-class debut for Rajshahi Division in the 2021-22 season.

He says that he owes everything to Alamgir for bringing him up as a cricketer. “Sir literally held my hand while teaching me everything about cricket. I learned how to be disciplined from him.”

Does he feel different than most other cricketers in Bangladesh who play a lot of age-group and Dhaka league matches before coming into the Bangladesh team?

“I always believed in myself,” he says. “I believed in my skills. I progressed with my confidence. When I played first-class cricket, I got an idea about what Test cricket is all about. I understood the discipline of it, what sort of fitness I should have. I got an idea about how to prepare for the longer format.”

It seems only yesterday he was playing taped-tennis cricket. Mention the form and his eyes light up.

“It has a very different feel to it. A taped tennis ball is light. A cricket ball has a bit more weight, so you have to keep a few things in mind when bowling with it. You can’t get swing with a taped-tennis ball, but you can swing the new cricket ball. You can do other things with the old ball. I think I bowl faster with the cricket ball than the tape ball,” he says.

Alamgir had to make corrections to Rana’s bowling action; it was an effective one for taped-tennis cricket, but it needed to be tuned for the weight of the cricket ball. The lighter tennis ball usually travels quicker, so he didn’t need to generate speed from a long run-up when playing with it. That changed and his run-up got longer. The way his foot landed on the popping crease needed work.

Rana cut his teeth in taped-tennis ball cricket, and many of his fundamentals were shaped by the format•Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

The way he used his wrist in taped-tennis cricket gave him a bit of extra pace, given his considerable height. Many of Rana’s fundamentals when he made his Test debut were rooted in informal cricket. He is a work in progress, but needs to be handled delicately because Bangladesh cricket will not want to lose his pace.

If Alamgir is the coach who found Rana, taught him proper cricket, and introduced him to the age-group and first-class scene, Talha Jubair, another former Bangladesh fast bowler, as head coach at Rana’s BPL (Khulna Tigers) and DPL (Shinepukur Cricket Club) teams, has also been instrumental in his evolution.

Talha saw Rana at a time when he had difficulty keeping his short run-up and landing at the crease in tune. “He was a late arrival at the U-19 World Cup camp,” Talha says. “He had a problem with bowling no-balls. We decided that he would have to rectify it, so before he headed back to Rajshahi, we worked on his running technique.

“We gave him videos of his running technique so that he could work on it with his coach Alamgir bhai. Rana had the raw pace back then, which suggested to us that he could be the real deal. I thought he had the potential to touch 150kph.”

Alamgir, while providing Rana with his cricketing knowledge and experience, has also been something of a father figure and mentor. When they spoke on the phone during the series in Pakistan, Alamgir assured Rana, speaking from his experience of playing in that country, that things would go right despite his misgivings about the pitches. Alamgir played one Test in Pakistan and also nine first-class matches there for Bangladesh A in the PCB Patron’s Cup in 2003-04.

“They usually make batting tracks,” Alamgir says. “When we spoke, Rana said that the practice pitches were mostly flat. He thought that would also be the case in the Tests. I told him to focus on his lines and lengths first. Since he is new to the Test scene, I figured that Pakistan would take a bit of time to adjust to his pace.”

Alamgir keeps tabs on Rana, on whether his focus is in the right place. “I tell him that you will read a lot of things about yourself on social media but you have to stay in control of your emotions. They will write nice things now, but when things don’t go well, they will write bad things about you.

“He has to judge the good and bad himself. His job is to think about cricket and perform well.”

Both Alamgir and Talha had short international careers. Kabir debuted in 2002 and played three Tests, though he did not take a wicket in any of them. Talha, who is the seventh-youngest Test debutant, had a career curtailed to 13 internationals by back injuries.

Rana has 11 wickets from his three Tests so far•Anjum Naveed/Associated Press

Talha speaks to players about how they should manage their cricket careers, particularly their fitness, lifestyle choices, and diet. “I always reflect with my players about how my career went. I tell them what I have faced in my playing days,” he says. “I talk to them about what my lifestyle should have been, and what they can learn from it. could have had a longer career if I managed my injuries better.”

When Bangladesh entered the Test arena, they didn’t have a stable pace bowling attack. Hasibul Hossain was an erratic tearaway, but the selectors found a new pace sensation shortly after: Mashrafe Mortaza was fast-tracked from the Under-17s into the senior team over nine months, but his complicated bowling action couldn’t withstand the workload of Test matches.

It didn’t, however, stop the selectors from going on to pick other teen pace sensations. Talha and Nazmul Hossain were injury-prone, while Shahadat, who has the most five-fors among Bangladesh’s fast bowlers, had a hard time handling his sudden fame. Rubel Hossain showed promise with his slingy action, but he was better with the white-ball. His Test record was poor. Robiul Islam burned bright in one Test series, while Mustafizur and Taskin couldn’t translate their white-ball skills to Test cricket quickly. By 2016 it looked like the team management had moved on from fast bowling altogether, resulting in perhaps the bleakest era for Bangladesh’s fast bowling.Taskin and Ebadot turned the tide after the pandemic, making strides as match-winners. Ebadot’s six-wicket haul helped Bangladesh to a miraculous Test win in New Zealand; that performance brought his Test bowling average down from 81 in his first ten matches to 35 in his next ten. He started his white-ball career brilliantly before an ACL injury put him out of the side. Taskin’s comeback story is well documented. Shoriful came into the Test attack after being part of the U-19 World Cup-winning side in 2020. Hasan Mahmud impressed Russell Domingo and Allan Donald in the nets.

Rana is another Bangladeshi fast bowler who has been rushed into Test cricket. Not many have survived this kind of fast-tracking in the past; there is now enough information and precedent for him to know the perils such a career trajectory might hold. His coaches, Talha and Alamgir, themselves went through difficult playing careers.

Right now, though, Rana is only thinking about the Test series against India. “I don’t think too far ahead,” he says.

“I feel that a cricketer must give importance to fitness,” he says. “[Otherwise] when the going gets tough in the middle, your brain doesn’t function properly. If you have good fitness, you can take good decisions. A cricketer knows how much fitness he needs. Only he will know what his body wants.

Being a prodigy in Bangladesh cricket can be something of a curse. Mohammad Ashraful had a rough time. Mustafizur had to deal with injuries. Rana’s Test career has begun brightly, a rarity for a Bangladeshi fast bowler. His desire to focus on fitness is a positive, and it could ultimately help him stay on course and not end up a cautionary tale like a number of his predecessors.

There will be temptations aplenty as he goes along, especially from the franchise T20 world. Right now, he is best with the red ball in hand. It is something that can take him places.

Mohammad Isam is ESPNcricinfo’s Bangladesh correspondent. @isam84

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