Mustafizur Rahman brings the fizz to Chepauk on opening night of IPL 2024

It’s 2015; there is quite a hype around someone named Mustafizur Rahman in Bangladesh. The cutters he bowls are tough to pick, and even when they are picked, they are tough to tackle. This, by the way, is on the back of Bangladesh making the quarter-final of the ODI World Cup.

India, travelling to Bangladesh in June, find that out first-hand. Across three matches, he picks up 13 wickets, and consigns India to a series defeat. Unchartered territory for Bangladesh; beyond the fans’ wildest dreams because from the land of spinners, here is now a fast bowler who can go toe-to-toe with the biggest gunslingers in the game.

A year on, Mustafizur bags an IPL contract. The Sunrisers Hyderabad show faith in him and they nurture him as this point-of-difference bowler. A bowler who can bowl across phases and can prize out wickets when the batters seem in their groove.

All of that comes to the fore as SRH win their maiden title in 2016. The left-arm pacer finishes with 17 wickets, averaging a wicket every 3.5 overs. His economy rate of 6.9 is the best among bowlers to have bowled a minimum of 20 overs in the season, and his stock only rises.

The whippy wrist action with which the cutters are delivered, and the zip he generates off the surface, also earns him a nickname. It helps that his original name rhymes with it, but ‘The Fizz’ just about seems right for the kind of bowler he is.

After all that early promise, though, he fizzles away (pun totally intended). He gets a few IPL gigs, namely with the Delhi Capitals, the Mumbai Indians and the Rajasthan Royals. But he fails to deliver the way he did for SRH in 2016.

Cut to December 2023.

Mustafizur’s name comes up at the IPL auction. Teams exchange glances. Of course, they know what he once did in the IPL. But are they willing to bet on him? Nine teams are not willing to do so. One team is. And if you have not guessed by now, that franchise is the Chennai Super Kings.

CSK have, over the years, developed this niche reputation. That they can take any player under their wings and transform them. It happened in 2023 with Ajinkya Rahane, Matheesha Pathirana, Shivam Dube and Tushar Deshpande.

If you go back to 2021, they threw Robin Uthappa at the deep end just before the playoffs and he played a couple of blinding knocks when it really mattered. Look at 2018, and maybe the whole team was written off, yet, they found a way.

So, even before a ball had been bowled this IPL, there was this feeling that Mustafizur would reincarnate as his 2016 self the moment he put on the CSK yellow. And while that particular narrative has become somewhat of a meme on social media, that is exactly what happened.

Mustafizur Rahman stars with a four-wicket haul

When he came on, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru were rampaging. The second ball he bowled was crunched through the covers by Faf du Plessis, formerly and famously of the CSK parish.

That ball, though, was an on-pace delivery. The next ball had to be slower. You could have bet your life on it. And it was. Du Plessis would have perhaps known it too. But he was still lured into his stroke. That, in a nutshell, is what Mustafizur is all about.

The slightly slower delivery forced the RCB captain to slice his stroke and offer Rachin Ravindra a chance at deep cover point. Balls later, Mustafizur, sensing Rajat Patidar is a bag of nerves, bowled the perfect Test match length. Nibbled it away just a smidgen and it took a feather through to MS Dhoni.

Six balls bowled. RCB’s momentum broken. Point of difference, created. First act done.

In his second act, he takes out Cameron Green and Virat Kohli. The latter is dismissed via a short ball. Again, he makes use of the longer pockets and forces Kohli to drag it from way outside off. Kohli takes the bait and chances his arm, only to get holed out on the fence.

Green, like clockwork, falls to another cutter. Fizzed through on a back of a length on leg stump, and Green, not knowing how quickly it will whiz off the surface because of the over-spin the left-arm pacer imparts, ends up being beaten for pace. Seems a little counter-intuitive given it was a slower ball but again, that is what Mustafizur does.

You may have watched multiple videos of him, but he still finds a way to outwit you.

Of course, these deceptions, in the past few years at least, have not happened very consistently, explaining his declining stocks. But CSK anyway do not pay heed to those notions. They look at a cricketer, see what he is good at and pick him based on how many times they feel he can recreate it, and if he will be suitable for what they want him to do, especially at home.

The other stuff does not matter.

And, that is how Mustafizur brought the Fizz to Chepauk on opening night. It was an evening that was supposed to be adorned by the mega superstars of the game. The Dhonis, the Kohlis, the Jadejas. But it quickly became a night of redemption for a bowler who had once shown he could dominate this league, even if it was fleetingly at that point.

If you go back to 2015 and that series against India, Mustafizur was, probably at the time, pantomime villain in this country. The city of Chennai, in particular, might not have looked kindly at his mid-pitch collision with Dhoni, which led to a 75% fine for the then-India captain and a 50% fine for Mustafizur.

Nine years on, Mustafizur is no longer pantomime villain. If anything, he is their new beacon of hope. Their new darling in the den. Pulled out from relative obscurity, and yet, a proper point-of-difference bowler.

That was what he was in 2016. That is what he still could be in 2024. All it needed was a yellow jersey, Mustafizur on the back, and a CSK badge on the heart.