That's why I said he seemed explosive. When he's on the creaze, you and commentators knew he is very aggressive. I remember Gautam saying whenever Tamim coming to the creaze, "He's a very aggressive player". And he looked like that too. Because his approach was very aggressive from the beginning. But the end product(strike rate) wasn't very healthy mainly because of dot balls. Lack of strike rotate. Also for Bangladeshi players, expectation of explosive strike rate was low. Thus he was refered as 'explosive' very often than not.
I would say, Only recently I would say he has been actually very explosive in terms of strike rate in the t20s. First major part of his t20 career his strike rate was 100-110.
Recently it has increased to 120+ due to his great form since 2015 onward.
I end my discussion with one example.
Sometimes a player with 4 fours 20 runs in 25 balls is seemed 'more explosive' than a guy with 2 fours 20 runs in 20 balls. Tamim was the first type.
But I always give more importance to the strike rate when judging a player's explosiveness like most do.
So I think Tamim was very aggressive but the end product was always not very much like one would assume.