The childish celebration that spans for more than two decades - The cherubic smile that softened even the most exhausting days – The celebration with a roar and clenched fist. The long, meditative hours of batting practice under a punishing sun. These are the images that surface whenever the name Mushfiqur Rahim is uttered in Bangladesh cricket. They are not merely memories; they are fragments of a national journey—an epic told through the life of a cricketer who refused to surrender to history, circumstance, or mediocrity.
Now, as
Mushfiqur becomes the first Bangladeshi to step into the rarefied company of
100 Test cricketers, his milestone demands more than celebration. It demands a
reckoning with what he has symbolised: resilience in a cricket culture built on
the uneasy coexistence of soaring dreams and cruel limitations.
Bangladesh
has played 155 Tests in its 25-year history. Mushfiqur has featured in nearly
two-thirds of them. That is not longevity; that is institutional memory.
A Career
Forged in Adversity
When
Mushfiqur Rahim first walked onto Lord’s in 2005, he looked startlingly
young—almost child-like—set against the theatre of cricket’s most storied
stage. His tiny frame and cautious smile contrasted violently with the
four-pronged English pace attack poised to dismantle an inexperienced
Bangladesh side. Yet he resisted. It was not a match-saving act, not even a
noteworthy statistical contribution, but it contained something Bangladesh
cricket desperately needed in those days: defiance.
Defiance
from a team mocked for simply being present.
Defiance
from a boy who could easily have been swallowed by the cynicism that enveloped
Bangladesh cricket in those formative years.
Through the
next two decades, that thread of resistance evolved into a science—a
disciplined, almost monastic approach to preparation that became Mushfiqur’s
signature. He was neither the most flamboyant nor the most naturally gifted,
but he became the most dependable. And in a nation where sporting fragility has
often been cultural, Mushfiqur’s discipline was radical.
The Last
of a Generation
The modern
pillars of Bangladesh cricket—Shakib Al Hasan, Mashrafe Mortaza, Tamim Iqbal,
Mahmudullah—have all now faded from the arena. Yet Mushfiqur remains, not
because he had fewer reasons to retire but because he had more reasons to keep
going. When he quit T20Is and ODIs, whispers grew louder that he was nearing
the end. Mushfiqur instead treated the speculation as an indictment of his work
ethic.
He
responded the only way he knows: with runs, with fitness, with sweat, with
monastic routine.
At 38, he
is still in the “why retire?” phase of his journey—an astonishing mindset in a
cricket culture that has historically lacked long-term athletic conditioning,
infrastructure, or continuity.
The Arc
of a Craftsman
Mushfiqur’s
career has not been smooth—it has been sculpted. He entered Test cricket with
technical flaws, fought through years of inconsistency, and rebuilt himself.
Coaches like Dav Whatmore and Jamie Siddons tinkered with his backlift, his
pull shot, and his game against pace. Tamim recalls that the raw talent was
never the story; the story was the work ethic. Mushfiqur made himself.
He did so
under difficult conditions: a brittle batting order, a domestic structure still
learning how to behave like a Test system, and a national expectation
perpetually oscillating between premature hope and volatile disappointment.
His
double-hundred in Galle in 2013—Bangladesh’s first—was not just a statistical
milestone; it felt like an emancipation. Mominul Haque, who debuted in that
match, remembers it as a watershed, an innings that allowed younger batters to
believe that Bangladesh could dream beyond survival.
That was
the year Mushfiqur turned the corner. His average leapt past 50, his discipline
matured, and his role crystallised: he became Bangladesh’s immovable spine.
Captain,
Keeper, Workhorse
Few
cricketers anywhere have carried a national team the way Mushfiqur has.
He
captained 34 Tests.
He kept
wicket in 55.
He combined
both roles in 28 matches—second only to MS Dhoni in Test history.
And he
still averaged over 41 as captain.
When he
finally relinquished the gloves in 2019, his batting blossomed further. The
numbers reveal the story of a cricketer who aged like a craftsman, not an
athlete: smarter, calmer, technically tighter, more self-assured.
Since 2013,
Mushfiqur has averaged over 42 in 69 Tests—the only Bangladeshi batter with a
40+ average over that period.
The
Traveller in a Land of Two-Test Series
There is a
peculiar tragedy in Mushfiqur’s career. Had he been Australian, English, or
Indian, he might have played 150 or even 180 Tests. Instead, Bangladesh’s
limited fixture list forced his career into a series of compressed,
under-resourced, two-match tours. Yet, within those constraints, he carved out
achievements that rival global greats:
Three Test
double-centuries — the most by any wicketkeeper-batter in history.
Hundreds in
six countries.
Bangladesh’s
highest away average among top-order batters.
Involved in
five of the team’s six partnerships exceeding 250 runs.
A
balls-per-dismissal ratio of 78.6 — the toughest Bangladeshi batter to
dislodge.
He was not
merely a participant in Bangladesh’s story; he was the axis around which its
Test evolution rotated.
The
Human Behind the Legend
The
milestone Test brought emotional truths to the surface. In the team huddle
before his 100th match, he told his teammates something revealing and
profoundly un-Bangladeshi in its humility:
“Mushfiqur
Rahim exists because of Bangladesh. I am just a drop in the ocean.”
He
dedicated his century in that match—he became only the eleventh cricketer in
history to score a hundred in his 100th Test—to his grandparents, who once
confessed they wished to live long enough to watch him bat.
These
gestures strip away the statistical armour and expose the emotional engine that
has powered this journey: gratitude, duty, and a sense of national
responsibility that is rare in modern cricket.
A Legacy
Beyond the Scorebook
Mushfiqur
Rahim is more than the sum of his runs or the longevity of his career. He is
the embodiment of Bangladesh’s slow, painful, stubborn rise into Test
relevance. He represents an entire generation that learned to endure
humiliation, absorb defeat, and still imagine a better cricketing tomorrow.
He is proof
that greatness in Bangladesh cricket is not something inherited; it is
something engineered.
As he looks
ahead to yet another Test series—Pakistan at home next April—he leaves the
future deliberately ambiguous. Perhaps he doesn’t need to plan too far. Legends
rarely do. Their careers do not end; they taper into memory, into habit, into
cultural inheritance.
In a
cricket world structured against the small and unfashionable, Mushfiqur Rahim
stood only five feet tall but stood tall enough for all of Bangladesh.
And perhaps
that is the true meaning of his 100th Test: not a milestone, but a metaphor for
a nation that learned—through him—how to stay, resist, and finally belong.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
