Shakib Al Hasan is one of Bangladesh's greatest cricketers, excelling as an all-rounder in all formats. His achievements in batting and left-arm spin have earned him global recognition. With numerous records and consistent performances, Shakib is a cricket legend.
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Shakib Al Hasan (born 24 March 1987) is a Bangladeshi cricketer widely regarded as the greatest player his country has produced and as one of the finest all-rounders of the modern era. A left-handed middle-order batter and slow left-arm orthodox bowler, he played 447 international matches for Bangladesh between 2006 and 2024, scoring 14,730 runs and taking 712 wickets — more than any other Bangladeshi. He is the only cricketer ever ranked the world's No. 1 all-rounder in all three formats at the same time (2015), and he captained Bangladesh in three separate spells between 2009 and 2024.
His career has also been one of the most eventful in the sport. He served a one-year playing ban imposed by the ICC in 2019 for failing to report corrupt approaches, was elected to parliament for the Awami League in January 2024, and has not returned to Bangladesh since that government fell in August 2024, after a murder case named him among the accused — allegations that have not been tried in court. As of November 2026 he has not played for Bangladesh since October 2024 and is not officially retired: he continues to play franchise cricket abroad and wants one farewell home series, but whether he will ever play for his country again remains genuinely unresolved.
Shakib was born in Magura, a district town in south-western Bangladesh, to Khondoker Masroor Reza and Shirin Reza. Cricket came to him early and informally. According to Prothom Alo sports editor Utpal Shuvro, the young Shakib was so proficient that he was often hired to play for different villages and teams. In one such match he impressed an umpire, who arranged for him to practise with the Islampur Para Club, a team in the Magura Cricket League. There, experimenting with spin after years of taped-tennis-ball cricket, he took a wicket with his very first delivery with a proper cricket ball.
He then spent six months training at the Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan (BKSP), the government sports institute, completing his secondary and higher secondary education there; he later earned a BBA from the American International University-Bangladesh. His talent showed at youth level: between 2005 and 2006 he played 18 Youth One Day Internationals, scoring 563 runs and taking 22 wickets. In the final of a 2005 under-19 tri-nation tournament against England and Sri Lanka, he scored a century off 86 balls and took three wickets to win the match — an early sign of the double threat that would define his career.
Shakib began playing for Khulna Division in Bangladesh's National Cricket League in 2004, at the age of 17, and stayed with the side throughout his career. His reputation soon travelled beyond Bangladesh. In 2010 he joined Worcestershire, becoming the first Bangladeshi cricketer to represent an English county club. In the Indian Premier League he played 71 matches for the Kolkata Knight Riders and was part of the squads that won the tournament in 2012 and 2014. A spell with the Adelaide Strikers in Australia's Big Bash League followed in 2014–15, and over the following decade he became one of the most travelled players in franchise T20 cricket, appearing in leagues across the Caribbean, Pakistan, the UAE and the United States, alongside regular seasons in the Bangladesh Premier League.
Shakib made his One Day International debut against Zimbabwe at Harare on 6 August 2006, scoring 30 and claiming his first wicket, that of Elton Chigumbura. His T20I debut followed against the same opponents on 28 November 2006, and his Test debut came against India on 18 May 2007. Within two years he was the side's outstanding player: he reached No. 1 in the ICC's ODI all-rounder rankings on 22 January 2009, topped the Test all-rounder rankings in December 2011 and the T20I rankings in December 2014.
His finest performances spanned every format. In November 2014, against Zimbabwe at Khulna, he scored a century and took ten wickets in the same Test — only the third cricketer in history, after Ian Botham and Imran Khan, to do so. At Wellington in January 2017 he made 217, then the highest Test score by a Bangladeshi, in a record fifth-wicket partnership with Mushfiqur Rahim.
The peak came at the 2019 World Cup in England and Wales. Shakib scored 606 runs in eight matches at an average of 86.57, with two centuries and five half-centuries — seven fifty-plus scores, equalling Sachin Tendulkar's record for a single edition — and took 11 wickets, becoming the only player in World Cup history to score 600 runs and take 10 wickets at one tournament. During it, he completed the ODI double of 5,000 runs and 250 wickets faster than any player in history, and he was named in the ICC's Team of the Tournament.
His career figures have been unchanged since his last internationals in 2024. In 71 Tests he scored 4,609 runs at 37.77 and took 246 wickets at 31.72, with 19 five-wicket hauls. In 247 ODIs he scored 7,570 runs at 37.29 and took 317 wickets at 29.52. In 129 T20Is he scored 2,551 runs and took 149 wickets at 20.91. As of 2026, he remains the leading wicket-taker in Men's T20 World Cup history.
Shakib captained Bangladesh in three spells. The first began by accident: on the 2009 tour of the West Indies, captain Mashrafe Mortaza was injured early in the first Test, and the 22-year-old Shakib led the side to a 2–0 Test series win and an ODI series win — Bangladesh's first series victories overseas, albeit against a home side weakened by a player dispute. He captained Bangladesh at the 2011 home World Cup, but in September 2011 the BCB removed him, and his deputy Tamim Iqbal, after a poor tour of Zimbabwe, citing unsatisfactory leadership and reports of indiscipline.
He returned as Test captain in December 2017, succeeding Mushfiqur Rahim, and also led the T20I side, until the ICC ban ended that spell in October 2019. A third spell began in June 2022, when he took over the Test side after Mominul Haque resigned; he added the ODI captaincy in August 2023, succeeding Tamim Iqbal ahead of the Asia Cup and World Cup. It ended on 12 February 2024, when the BCB appointed Najmul Hossain Shanto captain in all three formats. The board said Shakib remained its first choice but that a retinal condition in his left eye made his availability uncertain; Shakib had also said he would step down as ODI captain after the 2023 World Cup. In all, he captained Bangladesh in 120 matches, winning 47.
As a player, he combined a compact, wristy batting technique — strong square of the wicket and under pressure — with flighted, accurate left-arm spin built on changes of pace and angle rather than extravagant turn. His reading of match situations was rated among the best of his generation: for long stretches he was simultaneously Bangladesh's best batter, best bowler and on-field strategist.
Discipline shadowed Shakib's career long before his biggest ban. He was removed as captain in 2011 amid official complaints about indiscipline. In February 2014 the BCB banned him for three ODIs over an obscene gesture caught on live television. That July, after an altercation with a spectator and a dispute with coach Chandika Hathurusingha — he had left to play in the Caribbean Premier League without a no-objection certificate and told the coach he would quit rather than attend a training camp — the board suspended him for six months for what its president called a "severe attitude problem." The suspension was reduced on appeal; he returned on 15 September 2014.
The defining scandal came on 29 October 2019, when the ICC banned him from all cricket for two years, with one year suspended. Shakib accepted three charges of breaching the ICC Anti-Corruption Code by failing to report approaches from Deepak Aggarwal, a man known to the ICC's Anti-Corruption Unit as a suspected bookmaker, who had sought inside information during the January 2018 home tri-series and in the IPL, including an approach on 26 April 2018. Some of the messages had been deleted. He lost the captaincy, stepped down from the MCC World Cricket Committee, and was eligible to play again from 29 October 2020 — in practice, a one-year playing ban.
A second eligibility crisis arrived in late 2024. Reported for a suspect bowling action during a County Championship match for Surrey in September 2024, he failed independent assessments at Loughborough and in Chennai and was barred from bowling. He passed a third assessment and was cleared in March 2025, but the episode cost him a place in Bangladesh's 2025 Champions Trophy squad, because the selectors would not pick him as a batter alone. In December 2025 he admitted he had bowled with a bent arm "a little bit intentionally" in that Surrey match, exhausted after bowling some 70 overs straight after back-to-back Tests in Pakistan.
Politics brought the gravest matters of all. Elected an Awami League MP for Magura-1 in January 2024, he was in Pakistan with the Test team when the government fell on 5 August 2024. On 22 August 2024, a murder case was filed at Dhaka's Adabor police station by Rafiqul Islam, whose son Mohammad Rubel, a garment worker, had been shot at a protest on 5 August and died two days later. The complaint named 156 accused, including the ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina; Shakib was listed as accused no. 28, on allegations that some of the accused acted on the direct or indirect instruction of others. The allegations have not been tested in court, and Shakib's supporters note he was not in the country during the protests. He apologised publicly in October 2024 for having stayed silent during the uprising. In September 2025, the government's sports adviser declared he would not be allowed to play for Bangladesh again after he publicly wished Sheikh Hasina a happy birthday.
Shakib's international career effectively ended in the autumn of 2024. At a press conference in Kanpur on 26 September 2024, before the second Test against India, he announced his immediate retirement from T20Is — his last match in the format had been at the T20 World Cup that June — and said he wanted his Test farewell to come in the home series against South Africa in Mirpur in October, if he could travel safely; if that proved impossible, the Kanpur Test would be his last. The 2025 Champions Trophy, he said, would be his final ODI assignment.
The Mirpur farewell never happened. Named in the squad for the first Test, he was advised, while travelling from the United States, to wait in Dubai rather than fly home; the sports adviser recommended against his return, and on 18 October 2024 the selectors dropped him. The Kanpur Test of 27 September–1 October 2024 stands as his last Test and his last international match; his last ODI had come at the 2023 World Cup, and the Champions Trophy farewell also fell away when he was left out of that squad in January 2025.
Since then he has lived outside Bangladesh, based in the United States, and kept playing franchise cricket: captaining the Bangla Tigers in the Abu Dhabi T10 in November 2024; the Pakistan Super League with Lahore Qalandars in 2025; the Global Super League with Dubai Capitals in July 2025, where he made 58 not out and took four wickets in the opening match; and the ILT20 with MI Emirates in late 2025, before being released in August 2026. In December 2025 he reversed his retirement announcements, saying: "I am officially not retired from all formats… My plan is to go back to Bangladesh, play one full series of ODI, Test, and T20, and retire." In January 2026 the BCB reinstated him in its central contract list and said he would be considered for selection if fit and available, while noting that his legal cases are a matter for the government.
The stalemate has held through 2026. Shakib criticised Bangladesh's boycott of the 2026 T20 World Cup as a "blunder." In an interview with Reuters in August 2026, given by phone from Sri Lanka, where he was playing franchise cricket, he said he was ready to return, face trial in the two cases he said are active against him — the killing case and one brought by anti-corruption authorities — and play a farewell series, provided the government guarantees his safety; he also said he still hopes to play the 2027 ODI World Cup. As recently as 31 October 2026 he was insisting that Bangladesh still need him, above all in one-day cricket. As of November 2026, no return has been scheduled, and his international future depends on decisions — by the government, the courts and the selectors — that reporting has not yet resolved.
Shakib married Umme Ahmed Shishir, a Bangladeshi-American software engineer whom he had met in England during his Worcestershire season, on 12 December 2012 in Dhaka. They have three children: daughters Alayna, born in November 2015, and Errum, born in April 2020, and a son, Eyzah, born in March 2021. Since 2024 the family has been based in the United States.
Whatever happens next, Shakib's place in Bangladeshi sporting history is secure. For a decade and a half he carried a young cricket nation — its most reliable batter, its most incisive bowler and its most successful all-rounder — and his 2019 World Cup remains the finest individual tournament by a Bangladeshi player. A whole generation of Bangladeshi cricketers, among them Mustafizur Rahman, who broke through in 2015, grew up in a side built around him. The unresolved ending — an unfinished career, an exile shaped by politics, and a farewell he may never be granted — has made his story larger than cricket: a measure of how completely sport, celebrity and power became entangled in Bangladesh in his era.
