Who is Shakib Al Hasan?

Source : The Wisden Cricketer

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.”

Rabeed Imam is a journalist and Bangladesh cricket’s media manager

1 Shakib Al Hasan (B) 8 7.94
2 Gautam Gambhir (I) 8 7.63
3 Graeme Smith (SA) 7 7.21
4 Sachin Tendulkar (I) 9 7.00
= Jacques Kallis (SA) 8 7.00
6 Ben Hilfenhaus (A) 8 6.94
7 Andrew Flintoff (E) 8 6.88
= Dale Steyn (SA) 8 6.88
9 Fidel Edwards (WI) 8* 6.81
10 Andrew Strauss (E) 13* 6.77