Taskin Ahmed (born 3 April 1995) is a Bangladeshi right-arm fast bowler from Dhaka and the leader of the national side's pace attack. The first Bangladeshi to take five wickets on ODI debut, he holds the Bangladesh Premier League record figures of 7 for 19 and had taken 298 international wickets across formats as of July 2026.
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Taskin Ahmed (born 3 April 1995) is a Bangladeshi right-arm fast bowler from Dhaka and, for the best part of a decade, the spearhead of his country's pace attack. Tall, strong and genuinely quick, he has taken 298 international wickets across the three formats — 55 in 19 Tests, 137 in 94 one-day internationals and 106 in 90 Twenty20 internationals, as of July 2026 — and was long regarded as the fastest bowler Bangladesh had produced.
His career divides neatly into acts of promise, misfortune and vindication. He announced himself with a five-wicket haul on ODI debut in 2014, was suspended for an illegal bowling action in the middle of a World Cup in 2016, and lost two prime years to injury — breaking down in tears when fitness cost him a place at the 2019 World Cup. The bowler who returned in the 2020s was better than the one who had left: a series-winning performance in South Africa in 2022, a record-breaking Bangladesh Premier League season in 2024–25, and a permanent place at the head of a pace attack that, for the first time in the country's history, wins matches abroad.
Taskin was born in Dhaka, the son of businessman Abdur Rashid and Sabina Yasmin. He took up cricket at the Abahani playground — one of the capital's traditional nurseries of the game — on 10 January 2007, and progressed through the under-15 and under-17 levels into the Bangladesh under-19 team. He was educated at King Khaled Institute and Stamford College in Dhaka and later enrolled at the American International University-Bangladesh.
He made his first-class debut for Dhaka Metropolis against Barisal Division in October 2011, aged sixteen. At the 2012 Under-19 World Cup in Australia he was Bangladesh's highest wicket-taker, with 11 wickets — an early sign that his height and pace marked him out from a generation of Bangladeshi bowlers raised on spin.
Taskin's breakthrough came in the Bangladesh Premier League. In the 2013 semi-final, playing for the Chittagong Kings, the seventeen-year-old took 4 for 31 against Duronto Rajshahi and was named player of the match. He remained with the Chittagong franchise, rebranded the Vikings, before moving to Sylhet Sixers, for whom he took a team-high 22 wickets in 12 matches in the 2018–19 season. Subsequent BPL sides included the Rangpur Rangers, Sylhet Sunrisers, Dhaka Dominators and Durdanto Dhaka, while overseas he appeared for Kandahar Knights in the Afghanistan Premier League and Colombo Stars and Jaffna Kings in the Lanka Premier League.
His defining domestic season came in 2024–25 with Durbar Rajshahi. On 2 January 2025 he took 7 for 19 against Dhaka Capitals — the best bowling figures in BPL history and the third-best in all recognised Twenty20 cricket. He finished the season with 25 wickets in 12 matches at an average of 12.04, the most wickets taken in a single BPL season, passing the record of 23 held by Shakib Al Hasan, and was handed the Rajshahi captaincy midway through the tournament. He also became only the second bowler, after Shakib, to reach 100 career BPL wickets, and the 7-for-19 spell was afterwards honoured at the ESPNcricinfo Awards. For the 2025–26 season he signed with Dhaka Capitals.
Taskin's international debut came without warning. Called up during the 2014 World Twenty20 as cover for the injured Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, he made his T20I debut against Australia at Mirpur on 1 April 2014 and dismissed Glenn Maxwell. Two and a half months later, on 17 June 2014, he made his one-day international debut against India at the same ground and took 5 for 28 — the first five-wicket haul by a Bangladeshi on ODI debut. At the 2015 World Cup he was Bangladesh's leading wicket-taker in their run to the quarter-finals, taking three wickets in the Melbourne quarter-final against India, and his chest-bump celebration with Mashrafe became one of the tournament's enduring images. That home season he helped Bangladesh whitewash Pakistan in an ODI series and beat India.
His Test debut had to wait until 12 January 2017, at Wellington, where his first wicket was Kane Williamson. By then, however, his career had already been derailed once, and worse was to come. He lost his ODI place after October 2017 and did not win it back for two years.
The reconstruction began with that 22-wicket BPL season for Sylhet, and its most famous moment came with the bat. In the one-off Test against Zimbabwe at Harare in July 2021, Taskin, batting at number ten, scored 75 and shared a stand of 191 with Mahmudullah — the second-highest ninth-wicket partnership in Test history. The bowling honours followed in March 2022, when his 5 for 35 at Centurion bowled South Africa out for 154 in the deciding match of the series. Bangladesh won by nine wickets to record their first ODI series victory in South Africa, and Taskin was named both player of the match and player of the series. At the T20 World Cup in Australia later that year he was again Bangladesh's leading wicket-taker, with eight wickets, and in March 2023 he recorded career-best T20I figures of 4 for 16 against Ireland.
By then he was a senior figure. He was selected for the 2023 World Cup in India and served as vice-captain at the 2024 T20 World Cup, where Bangladesh reached the Super Eight stage. A maiden Test five-wicket haul finally arrived in November 2024 — 6 for 64 against the West Indies in Antigua, in his fifteenth Test. Injuries continued to ration his red-ball appearances: an Achilles problem kept him out of Test cricket throughout 2025, and he returned to the format against Pakistan in May 2026. In white-ball cricket he remained a first-choice selection, playing the ODI and T20I series against Zimbabwe in July 2026, and in August 2026 he was part of the attack that bowled Bangladesh to their first Test victory in Australia, at Darwin.
Taskin has not captained Bangladesh in international cricket, but he has held formal leadership roles: he was the T20I side's vice-captain at the 2024 World Cup in the Caribbean and the United States — where the board, notably, carried him in the squad despite a rib injury — and he captained Durbar Rajshahi in the BPL. His value to the side is as its pace-setter, the bowler entrusted with the new ball and the hardest overs at the death.
At six feet two inches, he bowls with a high action, hits the pitch hard and generates bounce that few subcontinental surfaces would otherwise offer. At the 2022 T20 World Cup he was timed at 149.56 kilometres per hour against Quinton de Kock — then the fastest delivery by a Bangladeshi, a national mark since passed by Nahid Rana — and he operates consistently in the high 130s and low 140s. Injuries and the 2016 remodelling of his action made him a more skilful bowler: his later success has owed as much to seam movement, a reliable yorker and cutters on slow pitches as to raw speed.
The gravest episode of Taskin's career came at the 2016 World Twenty20 in India. After Bangladesh's opening match against the Netherlands in Dharamsala on 9 March 2016, he and spinner Arafat Sunny were reported for suspect bowling actions; following assessment in Chennai, the ICC suspended both men from bowling on 19 March, in the middle of the tournament. The BCB's appeal was rejected, and the decision provoked protests in Bangladesh, where many regarded the timing as unjust. Taskin remodelled his action, and after re-assessment in Brisbane on 8 September 2016 showed his elbow extension to be within the permitted 15 degrees, the ICC cleared him to bowl again on 23 September 2016.
A lighter, if embarrassing, episode followed at the 2024 T20 World Cup. Before Bangladesh's Super Eight match against India in Antigua, Taskin overslept, missed the team bus and reached the ground only minutes before the toss; he was not selected. He apologised to his team-mates, and Shakib Al Hasan, then leading the side on the field that day, told reporters the matter was closed; Taskin maintained that he had not been due to play in any event, and he returned for the next match.
A recurring frustration has been the opportunities denied him. The Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL and Multan Sultans in the PSL both tried to sign him without success, and in 2023 the BCB refused Yorkshire — coached by his former Bangladesh bowling coach Ottis Gibson — permission to take him for a county season, citing his fitness and workload before the World Cup. Taskin admitted he was "hurt" to miss out while accepting the board's reasoning; he has never played county cricket.
The later 2020s have brought Taskin a measure of the stability his early career lacked. He was the board's only Grade A+ contracted player in 2025, and although an Achilles injury cost him that year's entire Test programme — and saw him moved to Grade A in the 2026 list — he stayed central to the white-ball sides, touring for the Champions Trophy in 2025 and producing match-winning spells such as his 4 for 28 against the Netherlands in August 2025. He returned to Test cricket against Pakistan in May 2026, played both white-ball series against Zimbabwe that July, and took the new ball in Bangladesh's historic first Test win in Australia in August 2026. As of November 2026 he remains an automatic selection when fit, opening the bowling in the home Test series against the West Indies.
Taskin married his childhood friend Sayeda Rabeya Nayeem in November 2017, and their first child, a son, was born on 30 September 2018.
His legacy is inseparable from the transformation of Bangladesh's bowling identity. A country that once apologised for its seamers built, around Taskin's pace and durability, a fast-bowling unit capable of winning Tests and series abroad. That he did so after a mid-World Cup suspension for his action, and after injury cost him what should have been his first World Cup in 2019, gives his career its particular shape: the poster boy of 2014 became, a decade later, the senior professional — vice-captain, record-holder and leader of the attack.
