5 reasons why cricket can be excited about Mehidy Hasan

#2 He is a thinking bowler

Mehidy is one of the smartest bowlers on the planet

In top-level cricket, talent alone does not work for long. Perseverance, hard work and above all, intelligence is incredibly important if a player is to really shine at the international level. Mehidy Hasan has that in abundance and one of his core strengths is identifying a batsman’s weakness and plugging away at it.

Case in point being his strategy against Australian captain and number 1 Test batsman Steve Smith in the recently-concluded 2-match Test series. Players like Smith do not have many weaknesses but a chink in his armour was exposed by Ravichandran Ashwin earlier this year, in the final Test of the India-Australia Test series. Ashwin bowled from around the wicket to stifle Smith’s run-making abilities and eventually brought about his downfall.

Hasan seemed to have studied that and followed the same strategy in the 1st Test and clean bowled the Australian captain in the 1st innings. When asked about the dismissal, he said, "We had a specific plan for Smith.” It is important to keep in mind that he is only 19 years old and a player who can outthink the world’s premier batsman at that age should certainly excite cricket fans.