Mohammad Rizwan: My T20 career looked finished to me before 2020 New Zealand tour
Pakistan wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan said that he found his T20 career in the doldrums during the tour of New Zealand back in December 2020. Before the three-match series, the right-hander had scored a mere 224 runs from 25 matches with very few knocks of substance to show for his efforts.
In the first two T20Is against the Black Caps, he got scores of 17 and 22, but was unable to make the starts count. But Rizwan’s fortunes changed after he scored a 59-ball 89 in the third T20I at the McLean Park in Napier and guided Pakistan to a four-wicket win.
Rizwan also got the Player of the Match award, although his knock couldn’t save the visitors from a 1-2 series defeat. Since then, the 29-year-old has scored 1415 runs from 30 T20Is at an incredible average of 74.47.
Mohammad Rizwan on the tough phase in his T20 career
“The whole year? I think it was how I wasn’t playing [T20s] before. My T20 career looked finished to me at the time. Before 2021 I was mostly on the bench, I didn’t get that many opportunities and when I did, it was at No. 6 or 7.
“Then the [2020-21] New Zealand series happened, the first match didn’t go that well and neither did the second one,” Rizwan told Cricket Monthly
Also Read: Mohammad Rizwan’s Highest T20I scores – Top 5 Performances
“I remember speaking to Iftikhar [Ahmed] before the third game and I said to him, ‘This is the last T20 match of my career.’ You must always believe, of course, that you have some strengths as a player in which you don’t lose faith. And I had this faith that if Allah got me to that point, then he would take care of me,” he added.
Rizwan upped his game to the extent that he became the leading run-scorer in T20Is in 2021. The Peshawar-born batter scored 1326 runs last year from 29 games at an average of 73.66 with one century against South Africa in Lahore and as many as 12 half-centuries.
Rizwan is now set to lead the defending champions Multan Sultans in the 2022 edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL), starting Thursday, January 27.