Mushfiqur Rahim: The pillar of Bangladesh cricket team

The Bangladesh cricket team has been considered one of the strongest teams in Asia, after the Indian team, surprising several big teams worldwide by defeating them in ICC events. Recently, they gave another shock to India’s arch-rival, the Pakistan national cricket team, by beating them for the first time in a long format after failing in the last 13 encounters. This win is very special as the country is going through a difficult time following the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina due to ongoing protests by students on government job reservations, which also led her to flee to India.

In the ongoing 2-Test series between Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Bangla Tigers managed to beat Pakistan in the first test by 10 wickets at their home ground, the Rawalpindi National Cricket Stadium, after chasing down 30 runs on the final day of the test match in the second session. However, this victory would not have been possible without the architect of the win, Mushfiqur Rahim, who was playing after missing out on the last test series against Sri Lanka due to a thumb injury.

Returning to the national side after 4 months, he played a match-winning knock of 191 runs in the first innings, giving his team a crucial lead of 117 runs, which put a lot of pressure on the home team in front of Bangladesh's spinners, who were getting a lot of help from the surface. For his impeccable performance, the senior player was awarded the Man of the Match Award. But this is not the first time he has played a memorable knock for his team in his 19-year international career, as the 39-year-old cricketer has been part of such big matches on several occasions.

The wicket-keeper batter made his international debut in 2005 at Lord’s against England at the age of just 17 years, and now he is the leading run-scorer for his team in long formats. So far, the 39-year-old cricketer has represented the Bangladesh cricket team in 462 international games in all formats, scoring more than 13,500 runs with 20 hundreds to his name.

Through this article, we are going to talk about Mushfiqur Rahim's best knocks in international cricket 

1. 101 vs Zimbabwe, Harare, 2011

This knock came in a losing cause when Bangladesh was on the back foot after losing 2 back-to-back games of a 5-match ODI series against Zimbabwe. Heading into the 3rd ODI series, the home team needed to chase 250 runs in 50 overs at Harare. Despite getting a good start with 50 runs for the opening wicket, the guests lost 3 consecutive wickets in a span of 41 runs against Zimbabwe's bowling attack. From this horrible condition, Mushfiqur took his team to 245 runs while forming small partnerships with tailenders. However, he didn’t get enough support from other batters, which led to a loss by just 5 runs. Still, his knock will be remembered for a long time, where he showed resilience by staying at the crease and scoring 101 runs in 100 balls, hitting 8 boundaries and 1 maximum.

2. Test double hundred against Sri Lanka in 2013 at Galle

The 2012-13 season was one of the best seasons for the Bangladesh cricketer as he was in top-notch form, which helped his team to beat West Indies in a 3-match ODI series by 2-1 and later draw a test against Sri Lanka in Galle.

Being the captain of the Bangladesh side, he came to the crease and played an incredible knock of 200 runs, giving a lead of 68 runs after surpassing Sri Lanka’s first innings score of 570 runs by scoring 638 runs. Bangladesh got a bad start and lost 2 wickets at the score of 63 runs before Rahim and Mominul Haque formed a hundred-run partnership for the 3rd wicket.

After the fall of Haque’s wicket, the senior cricketer formed another match-saving partnership with Nasir Hossain of 267 runs to save his team from a loss. He also mentioned this knock as one of the best in his career, where he batted for almost 135 overs on the pitch against a strong Sri Lankan bowling lineup.