Bangladesh’s 22-year-old allrounder Shakib Al Hasan is TWC’s Test player of the year. Still relatively unknown around the world, he tells Rabeed Imam about his reluctant path into cricket
Who is Shakib Al Hasan? Ask most cricket followers around the world who the best player in the last 12 months has been and you are likely to hear the names of Graeme Smith, Mitchell Johnson, Gautam Gambhir or Andrew Strauss. Shakib’s is far less likely to get a mention. Yet he has taken 45 wickets at 23 with his left-arm spin, including five five-fors. Add to that 498 runs at 35.57 and he already has the kind of allrounder figures that Andrew Flintoff could only have dreamed of – not bad for a 22-year-old.
Yet it almost was not to be. “I never had any interest in cricket until I found out I was good at it and that you can travel the world playing this game,” says Shakib. “At the age of 15 to 16 I got selected in three representative age-group teams. I was touring countries and thought this wasn’t too bad considering I hadn’t held a proper cricket ball until I was 14.”
His lack of interest in cricket can probably be explained by his family upbringing. “Football runs in the family,” he says. “My dad was a well-known footballer in our district and a cousin, who I looked up to and idolised, was a prolific striker for a top club and was a Bangladesh international. I was hooked on football. Cricket was a less serious pastime and was limited to some village knockabouts with a taped tennis ball. To become an international cricketer from where I come from it requires luck and a mini-miracle.”