• 15 Nov, 2026

Rising Star’s Biography: The Anamul Haque

Overview

Mohammad Anamul Haque Bijoy (born 16 December 1992) is a Bangladeshi cricketer from Khulna Division — a right-handed opening batter and wicket-keeper who holds one of the most unusual records in the modern game: in the 2021–22 Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League he became the first player in history to score 1,000 runs in a single List A tournament, finishing with 1,138. A decade earlier he had captained Bangladesh at the 2012 Under-19 World Cup and finished as that tournament's highest scorer, then marked his second one-day international with a match-winning century. His international career since has been a study in persistence: a dislocated shoulder at the 2015 World Cup cost him his place just as rivals emerged, and he has spent much of the time since being dropped, recalled and dropped again.

As recorded by ESPNCricinfo as of June 2026, he has played 8 Tests, 49 one-day internationals — scoring 1,352 runs with three centuries — and 20 T20 internationals, alongside a first-class career of 138 matches and 9,272 runs. In June 2022 he returned to the Test side after an absence of seven years, nine months and eight days, the longest gap between Test appearances by any Bangladeshi cricketer. He has never announced a retirement, and he was still playing Test cricket in 2025.

Early Life and Background

Anamul Haque was born on 16 December 1992 in Kushtia, a district town in Khulna Division in western Bangladesh. He attended Kushtia Zilla School until the sixth grade before moving to the Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan (BKSP), the national sports institute, where his game was shaped. He was still a schoolboy when he made his first-class debut, and he was a member of Bangladesh's squad at the 2010 Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand.

His defining youth tournament came two years later. As captain of Bangladesh at the 2012 Under-19 World Cup in Australia, Anamul finished as the highest run-scorer of the tournament: 365 runs in six matches at an average of 60.83, with two centuries — he was the only batter to score two — and a half-century. Bangladesh beat Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the play-offs to finish seventh, and their captain returned home recognised, in the words of the Dhaka press, as the rising star of Bangladesh cricket. Among his team-mates on that tour were the future internationals Taskin Ahmed and Litton Das.

Domestic Career

Anamul made his first-class debut for Dhaka Division in the National Cricket League in late 2008, while still in his mid-teens, scoring only 70 runs in six innings in his first season. From 2011 he represented Khulna Division, the side of his home region, and in the 2011–12 National Cricket League he was the tournament's highest run-scorer with 816 runs, including three centuries. His highest first-class score, 216 against Rangpur Division, came in September 2017, in a season he finished as the National Cricket League's top scorer with 619 runs at an average of 77.37; the following season he led the run-scoring in the Bangladesh Cricket League with 658 runs in six matches. As of June 2026 his first-class record reads 9,272 runs in 138 matches at 41.39, with 24 centuries.

It is in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League, the country's leading one-day competition, that his name is written largest. Playing for Prime Bank Cricket Club in 2021–22, he scored 1,138 runs in 15 matches at an average of 81.28, with three centuries and nine half-centuries — passing a landmark no one in world cricket had reached: a thousand runs in a single List A tournament. He kept producing at the same level after moving to Abahani Limited: 834 runs in 2022–23, the tournament's second-highest tally; 563 runs at 70.37 in 2023–24; and in 2024–25 he was again the league's highest scorer, with 874 runs at 79.45 including four centuries, in the course of which he scored his 50th century in recognised cricket — the first Bangladeshi to reach that mark.

In the Bangladesh Premier League he was bought by Dhaka Gladiators for US$20,000 in the inaugural 2012 season and for US$121,000 a year later, when his 356 runs made him the team's second-highest scorer. Spells with Chittagong Vikings, Comilla Victorians, Dhaka Platoon, Sylhet Sunrisers, Fortune Barishal and Khulna Tigers followed, and in the 2025 season, playing for Durbar Rajshahi, he finally scored his maiden BPL century — 100 not out off 57 balls against Khulna Tigers — finishing as the tournament's fifth-highest scorer. He was also signed by Quetta Gladiators of the Pakistan Super League in 2017.

International Career

Anamul was named in Bangladesh's squad for the home Asia Cup of 2012, although his debut did not come until the West Indies series at the end of that year. He made his one-day international debut at Khulna on 30 November 2012 and scored 41 in a comfortable win. Two days later, in only his second match, he played the innings that made his reputation: 120 from 145 balls, with 13 fours and two sixes, sharing a 174-run third-wicket partnership with his captain, Mushfiqur Rahim, that was then a Bangladesh record for that wicket. Bangladesh's 292 for 6 set up a victory by 160 runs — at the time the largest in their one-day history — Anamul was named player of the match, and at nineteen he became the third-youngest Bangladeshi to score a one-day international century. His T20 international debut followed in the same series, and his Test debut came against Sri Lanka at Galle on 8 March 2013.

He added two more one-day centuries in 2014: exactly 100 against Pakistan at Dhaka in the Asia Cup in March, and 109 against the West Indies at Grenada in August. In Tests, however, he never established himself. After four matches his average stood at 9.12 with a highest score of 22, and a second-innings duck against the West Indies at St Lucia in September 2014 closed his first chapter in the format. In one-day cricket he remained a regular, opening the batting with Tamim Iqbal, and he went to the 2015 World Cup as Tamim's partner. There, after two innings of 29, his tournament — and, in hindsight, his career as an automatic selection — ended on 5 March 2015 at Nelson, where he dislocated his right shoulder diving to stop a boundary against Scotland. He could not bat in that match, was ruled out of the World Cup and was replaced by Imrul Kayes.

By the time he recovered, the opening positions had new claimants: Soumya Sarkar had starred in the home series against Pakistan, Litton Das had arrived, and Imrul Kayes was enjoying a second wind. Anamul, who had played 30 one-day internationals in a little over two years, was out of the side for nearly three years. A first comeback came in January 2018, for the home tri-series, amid the upheaval that followed coach Chandika Hathurusingha's resignation; he was retained for the West Indies tour that July but made only 33 runs in three matches and was dropped again.

His second, more celebrated return was earned in domestic cricket. Recalled in April 2022 on the back of his 1,138-run Dhaka Premier League season, he played the second Test against the West Indies at Gros Islet that June — completing an absence from Test cricket of seven years, nine months and eight days, a record for a Bangladeshi — and on the Zimbabwe tour that followed he was Bangladesh's highest scorer in the one-day series, with 169 runs and two half-centuries. A poor home series against India in December 2022 cost him his place again, but the pattern of his career repeated itself: he was called into the 2023 Asia Cup squad as the replacement for the fever-stricken Litton Das, played one match, and appeared in a further one-day international against Sri Lanka in March 2024. In April 2025 he was recalled to the Test squad for the first time since December 2022 and played in the series in Sri Lanka that June.

Playing Style

Anamul is a compact right-handed opener from the BKSP production line, technically correct against the new ball and, by his own account, happiest playing the pull and the cut; he is also a capable wicket-keeper, though Bangladesh have generally used him as a specialist batter. The criticism that has followed him since his first spell in the side concerns his scoring tempo against spin: under coach Chandika Hathurusingha it was held that, unable to rotate the strike once the field was spread, he was driven to hit boundaries or stall — a weakness of method that shaded, in Hathurusingha's reported description, into selfishness. Anamul has said that in his years in domestic cricket he worked specifically on picking up singles and twos in those phases, and his later domestic returns — made at strong strike rates as well as in volume — suggest the lesson took.

Records and Achievements

Anamul's landmark achievement is his 2021–22 Dhaka Premier League season: 1,138 runs for Prime Bank, the first instance in the history of List A cricket of a batter scoring 1,000 runs in a single tournament, and still the defining individual season in Bangladeshi domestic one-day cricket. In 2025 he became the first Bangladeshi to score 50 centuries across recognised cricket. His return to the Test team in June 2022, after seven years, nine months and eight days, is the longest interval between Test appearances by a Bangladeshi. As a youth cricketer he was the highest scorer at the 2012 Under-19 World Cup, with 365 runs and two centuries as Bangladesh's captain. His three one-day international centuries — 120 against the West Indies in 2012, 100 against Pakistan in 2014 and 109 against the West Indies in 2014 — all came before his twenty-second birthday; his 120, made in his second match, was nominated among ESPNCricinfo's best one-day batting performances of 2012.

Controversies

Two episodes have attached themselves to Anamul's name. The first came under his captaincy at the 2012 Under-19 World Cup, in the quarter-final against Australia: with the hosts reeling at 3 for 11 in pursuit of 172, his bowler Soumya Sarkar ran out the non-striker Jimmy Peirson for backing up too far. The dismissal was legal, but it was widely criticised as contrary to the spirit of the game, and it remains a standard reference point in debates about the "Mankad" in youth cricket. The second is the judgement passed on his batting by the Hathurusingha regime: the coach's reported description of him as "selfish", reflecting concerns about his strike rotation against spin, was a significant factor in his long exclusion after 2015 and was still being discussed when he forced his way back into the squad in January 2018.

Later Career

Anamul's later career has been lived between two levels: too prolific for domestic cricket to ignore, never quite secure in international cricket. Between 2018 and 2025 he was recalled to Test, one-day and T20 squads at intervals — for the 2022 tours of the West Indies and Zimbabwe, the 2023 Asia Cup, the Sri Lanka series of March 2024 and the Test squads of 2025 — and dropped after most of them, his 49 one-day internationals spread across more than eleven years. At the same time his domestic output has grown heavier with age: three consecutive Dhaka Premier League seasons among the top scorers, the 50-century landmark in 2025, and a maiden Bangladesh Premier League hundred in the same year. As of late 2026, in his mid-thirties, he remains an active first-class and List A cricketer with Khulna Division and no announced retirement; his most recent internationals were the Tests in Sri Lanka in June 2025.

Personal Life and Legacy

Anamul is married to Fariya Era, and the couple have a daughter.

His legacy is a paradox of Bangladeshi cricket. As a teenager he appeared to have everything: a record-breaking Under-19 World Cup as captain and top scorer, a hundred in his second one-day international, three ODI centuries by the age of twenty-one. Yet his international record — 1,352 runs in 49 one-day matches, and a Test career of eight matches and 162 runs — never matched that beginning, undone by a shoulder injury at a World Cup, by the rise of Soumya Sarkar and Litton Das in his absence, and by a flaw against spin that selectors could not overlook. Where his name endures is in the domestic game he refused to leave: the first thousand-run season in List A history, a half-century of centuries in recognised cricket, and comebacks in 2018, 2022 and 2025 that make him, as much as any player of his generation, the emblem of the Bangladeshi cricketer who would not go away.