Tanzim Sakib, an all-round pace bowler for Bangladesh, is undoubtedly very different from other young people his age when it comes to their free time. The 21-year-old reads a lot of books, so it’s obvious that he gets excited when he talks about his passion.

“I don’t read fictional books much, I try to read self-improvement books. Now I am reading a book called Mind Set. There is Mind Set, and another book is called Home of Matches that’s a favorite book, and have almost finished it,” he said after completing a practice session at the BCB academy premises to prepare for the three-match T20Is against India.

Tanzim even makes notes of lines he believes would be useful to him later on. “Definitely, I have noted a lot of things from the book ‘Home of Matches’. And these have helped me a lot, for example, there is a saying from the book Home of Matches, “When you change what you believe, you change what you do,” and this has helped a lot in my life,” he said.

After Shoriful Islam was injured earlier this year, Tanzim, who wasn’t a part of the T20 World Cup squad secured a berth in the first-choice pace attack. Tanzim had to wait for his chance, while teammates like Shoriful Islam and others were selected for the senior team immediately following their ICC Under-19 World Cup in 2020.

“Whenever my teammates got a chance in the national team, it never came across my mind that I also need to be in the national team,” said Tanzim. “I thought that whenever I will go to the national team I have to go there after being completely ready so that they can’t drop me after playing one or two matches. And during that time I was working a lot on myself, I was working on how to improve my skills and my plan was to go to the national team with my best version,” he said.

“I knew that I had to wait for my time and actually everyone’s life is different. I waited for my opportunity, and I never got impatient. Because I have just started my career and after becoming champion of U19, the hunger to do better increased inside me. And that U19 helped a lot in my cricket career, my mindset became really strong. So, I never lost my patience and was at all the time focused. I never thought much about the future and always tried to stay in the present and tried to improve myself.”

Due in large part to his impressive performance against India in their most recent ICC T20 World Cup match, as well as the fact that he picked up Rohit Sharma in his T20I debut, Tanzim is currently quite confident going into the series.

“It was my debut match and Rohit Sharma was the opponent or there was Team India,” he recalled. “Actually, to be honest, I didn’t think of that for once. I was told that I am new I won’t be ready for Rohit Sharma. But I was sure that I would play with my strength. If I can bowl at the right places and can make the new ball swing it will put any batter in trouble. I thought about what strength I had and tried to utilize that in the field, I didn’t think about who the opponent was.

“I keep one thing in mind a good ball is a good ball for everyone. Doesn’t matter if he is the number one batter or a domestic-level cricketer, a good ball is a good ball for any batter. I always try to deliver my best ball,” he said.

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