Mushfiqur Rahim

On the verge of his 20th year playing international cricket, Bangladesh’s long-term wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim has become one of the most familiar faces on the landscape of international cricket as he continues to rack up the matches and the performances at the heart of the Tigers’ batting.

As a consistent player through the 21st century, he owns a host of records for his national team, and at the age of 37 with plenty of experience behind him. He continues to play significant innings such as the score of 191 to set up a win in the first Test match against Pakistan in their famous series win in 2024.

Early career — Lord’s debut

Mushfiqur Rahim was chosen for the touring squad for Bangladesh’s maiden visit to England in 2005, but wasn’t initially intended to play. His impressive performance on the touring matches in the warm-up matches prior impressed the team management, who fast-tracked him into the lineup as a batter for the Lord’s Test match.

Making his debut soon after his 18th birthday, he became the second-youngest player to feature at the home of cricket after Sachin Tendulkar. He had a fairly quiet match and dropped out of the reckoning, but was tasked to lead a talented U-19 outfit to the World Cup in 2006 in Sri Lanka.

Finding his feet in international cricket

Mushfiqur Rahim first established himself for Bangladesh in the ODI format, where he was the first choice wicketkeeper for the memorable 2007 World Cup campaign. He scored a half-century in the famous victory over India.

He was elected as vice-captain to Mashrafe Mortaza in 2009, at just the age of 22. Having nailed down the wicketkeeper role as his own, went on to have a big year in 2010, including a maiden Test century while playing against India in Chittagong. His maiden ODI century would follow the next year in 2011 in Harare against Zimbabwe.

Rahim has a total of 20 international centuries, including Bangladesh’s first Test double century and Bangladesh’s fastest ODI century in just 60 balls, under his belt.

Captaincy

The captaincy of the Bangladesh national team was taken up by Mushfiqur Rahim in late 2011, the same year the Tigers hosted the ODI World Cup. He took over as captain after Shakib Al Hasan’s rough patch.

The biggest success of his tenure was the 2012 Asia Cup held at home, where Bangladesh reached their first Asia Cup final and fell agonizingly short of lifting the trophy. The highlight of Rahim’s tournament was a quickfire unbeaten 46(25) at the death against India, sealing another famous victory for Bangladesh over the neighbours and playing spoilsport by winning the match in the last over of the match in which Sachin Tendulkar scored his 100th international century.

Rahim would withdraw from ODI captaincy in 2014, but would stay on as the red-ball captain up until 2018, where he was replaced originally by Tamim Iqbal. He continues to be a fixture of Bangladesh’s ODI and Test teams to this day.

Records

Mushfiqur Rahim is the leading appearance-maker for Bangladesh across formats with 463 matches in his career, and is also the leading run-scorer in Test cricket for the team with 5892 runs.

He sits only 8 runs behind Tamim Iqbal as he aims to become the Tigers’ leading run-scorer across formats. His score of 219* against Zimbabwe in Dhaka remains the highest Test score by a Bangladeshi.

He is behind only MS Dhoni in the list of most Test matches captained as a wicketkeeper, with 28.

In the history of cricket, no player has scored more runs on a single cricket ground across formats than Mushfiqur Rahim’s 4956 runs at Sher E Bangla Stadium in Dhaka.