Ahead of the T20 World Cup, when the Bangladesh Cricket Board released the ‘Green-Red Story’ series featuring the 15 players picked for the tournament, Towhid Hridoy was very clear on what he wanted to do in his assignment.
He wanted to win the World Cup.
The 23-year-old already has a world championship medal at youth level when Bangladesh won the U-19 World Cup in 2020.
At senior level, though, Towhid failed to make an impact when he played his first World Cup – in the 50-over format – last year in India, despite being one of the in-form batters leading up to the tournament.
This year, Towhid has been head and shoulders above his team-mates in T20Is, and thus the onus was on him to perform at the World Cup, as a big part of how Bangladesh would fare at the tournament depended on how he did.
In his first-ever T20 World Cup match, Towhid passed with flying colours.
He came to the crease when Bangladesh were under serious pressure, down to 28-3 chasing 125 as their top-order, inevitably, failed again.
His first boundary came against Matheesha Pathirana with a straight drive down the ground, and in the next over, he smashed Wanindu Hasaranga for a six over mid-wicket, Bangladesh’s first of the innings.
Those two boundaries released the shackles Sri Lanka put on the Tigers with the new ball, and then Towhid decided to unleash himself on Hasaranga.
The first three balls of the 12th over went – six, six, and six. The first two went over mid-wicket as Towhid picked the leg-spinner’s googlies, and then when he flighted one outside off stump, the Bangladesh batter decided to send him to the stands over extra cover.
The next ball saw Towhid dismissed, but the damage was done as the required run rate dropped to almost four, which eventually ensured that despite the collapse that followed, Bangladesh could walk out with a win.
His knock of 40 off 20 balls was the only third time when a Bangladesh batter scored 40 or more runs with a strike rate of 200 or more in a T20 World Cup after Mohammad Ashraful [61 off 27 against West Indies, 2007] and Liton Das [60 off 27 against India, 2022].
If Bangladesh persist with Towhid as their number five, then he will have the role of being the enforcer in the middle-overs, something he did brilliantly in his first bite at it in a global event, showing signs that he might be the Tigers’ trump card in the tournament.
And if Bangladesh want to progress to the Super Eight and beyond, he will need to keep doing it, over and over.
Towhid surely knows that. After all, he wanted to win the World Cup.
