Shakib Al Hasan joins Jacques Kallis, Shahid Afridi

Shakib Al Hasan joins Jacques Kallis, Shahid Afridi

The T20 International series against Afghanistan at Dehradun turned out to be disaster for Bangladesh. Their 0-3 whitewash was Afghanistan’s third ever for a T20I series of 3 or more matches. However, that did not prevent Shakib Al Hasan from entering record books. When Shakib had Najibullah Zadran caught by Mahmudullah at long-on, few realised that he had taken 500 international wickets across formats. This made him the third cricketer in history (after Jacques Kallis and Shahid Afridi) to the 10,000 run-500 wicket double in international cricket. He had scored his 10,000th run earlier this year, in an ODI against Sri Lanka at Mirpur.

Shakib has played 302 international matches, all of them for Bangladesh (both Afridi and Kallis have also played for representative XIs that were given international status). Kallis, the best batsman of the three, got his 10,000th run in an ODI against Sri Lanka at Johannesburg in 2002-03. His 500th wicket came at the same venue, in a Test against Australia, but as late as in 2008-09. Afridi, on the other hand, got his 10,000th run in an ODI against Zimbabwe at Harare in 2013 and his 500th wicket in a World T20 2014 match against Australia at Mirpur.

No one among current cricketers is remotely close to emulate Kallis, Afridi, or Shakib. Of former cricketers, Kapil Dev (9,031 runs and 687 wickets) and Sanath Jayasuriya (21,032 and 440) came close. Chris Cairns had 8,273 runs and 420 wickets.