It was a dream debut.
19-year-old Mustafizur Rahman ran through the Indian batting order, flummoxed them with his cutter, picked a fifer and even bagged the man of the match award in his first-ever ODI. But, he was not allowed to finish his quota of 10 overs.
Rahman’s figures from the game read 9.2-1-50-5 because midway his spell he forgot to get out of the way of a charging MS Dhoni and had the wind knocked out of his lungs. (watch video) Rahman was then forced to leave the field and Nasir Hossain stepped up and completed the over.
Captains Say Incident “Nothing Big”
After the match though, MS Dhoni shrugged off the incident while speaking to the media saying, “Both of us thought maybe the other guy will move but we ended up with a, what you can say, a typical kind of a street clash. Thankfully he didn’t get injured, and I didn’t get injured. I think this can happen in any match. It’s nothing big. I spoke to him later.”
His Bangladeshi counterpart too dint seem think much of the collision that incidentally forced Rahman to get treatment for over an hour. While speaking of the incident, Mortaza said, “Things like this can happen on the field during a match. It’s nothing serious.”
ICC Fines Dhoni & Mustafizur
Now while the captains may be singing similar tunes after the match, there obviously is no fooling the ICC.
Match referee Andy Pycroft called a hearing and even though the Indian skipper chose to plead not guilty, he has been charged with a Level 2 offense under the ICC’s Code of Conduct and fined 75% of his salary.
Celebrations in the Bangladesh camp too were halted after the man-of-the-match was called for a hearing next, and since he had collided with Rohit Sharma earlier in the game, he was deemed a repeated offender and fined 50 per cent of his match fee.
Interestingly, Bengali daily Prathom Aalo quoted the 19-year-old as saying “I made a mistake coming in the way”.