She wasn’t Bangladesh’s only match-winner, but Marufa’s hooping deliveries set the tone for victory
Andrew Fidel Fernando02-Oct-2025Imagine having taken almost 18% of the pace-bowling ODI wickets your country has ever got, all by yourself. Imagine having done all that in less than four years in internationals, before you turn 21. Then imagine that, in your first ever World Cup match, your captain throws you the new ball to set the team’s campaign into motion, and in that tone-setting over, you bowl spectacular deliveries back-to-back to dismiss two batters, one of whom is the opposition’s best.Welcome to the life of Marufa Akter. If you are new here (many of us are), there are two internet pages worthy of your consideration. If you are a numbers person, try this link and note her figures in Asia, in particular. If you’re more of a visual learner (and even if you’re not, this one will still electrify you), try this clip of her taking her wickets.Note that she is not merely “swinging” these deliveries. Marufa is them. Sending them around a corner, like a stock car on slick tyres, drifting around a bend. Like a planet falling into orbit having shot too close to a star.Related
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Colombo’s humid conditions are generally good for new-ball swing, and great inswing bowlers have operated here before. But the last time this Khettarama Stadium saw a right-arm bowler send such unplayable bananas down the track, Nuwan Kulasekara was the architect. But Kulasekara played 20 ODIs at this venue. Marufa was doing it in her first ever ODI in the country.”I know my balls swing more, more, more,” Marufa said in English, which is a distant second language for her, roughly six hours after her opening spell. And still “more, more, more” catches the spirit of the amount of swing she was getting. She went on, in English, to try and explain what her last thoughts before she went to bed were: “Always, I’ve been thinking, how to do well in the first match, and be the matchwinner.”Others would take up the mantle and drive home the advantage that Marufa won. Shorna Akter, the only bowler to turn the ball significantly in this match, took three wickets for five runs. Nahida Akter also took two wickets, but for 19 runs, when Marufa gave away 31. There was no doubt as to who had set the tone for this Bangladesh win, however. Those two hooping inswingers should now become articles of excellence in the World Cup lore.Right-arm bowlers bowling inswing to right-arm batters is understood to be one of the oldest hustles in this sport. Many right-armers anyway generate inswing to right-handers, who are taught by coaches from childhood upwards never to keep a gap in between bat an pad.But the best inswing bowlers, like Marufa against Pakistan, upset this paradigm. The best inswing bowlers that gap between bat and pad, starting wide of the stumps, swinging from the hand, but then continuing to swing at increasingly sharp angles.The Marufa ball to Omaima Sohail may perhaps be a life highlight – the cricket ball swerving dramatically past all hard objects until the top of leg stump is found. The next ball was perhaps less impressive, but had more impact. Marufa started this inswinger waaay outside off. Having seen her team-mate’s stumps rattled, Sidra Amin – Pakistan’s best batter this year – maybe felt the need to play. She was good enough to get an inside edge to a ball that was swinging prodigiously; unfortunately for her, it richocheted into her leg stump.After the match, Pakistan captain Fatima Sana said that Marufa’s early wickets had suggested that seamers would thrive on this pitch. But Pakistan’s quicks couldn’t quite find the same impact.’We really enjoyed bowling with the new ball as the ball was seaming around,” Sana said. “Danny [Diana Baig] also felt the same. So we were trying to take early wickets but unfortunately we could take only one wicket each. We saw Marufa bowled well, so we knew there would be help for pacers.”How Marufa develops remains to be seen, but at age 20 she is already making matchwinning contributions. And in her first over at a big one-day tournament, she bowled two deliveries this World Cup could be remembered by.