Sports desk: The three players who so far played 50th Test for Bangladesh could never manage to score more than 12 runs in their landmark Test. Former skipper Habibul Bashar Sumon was the first to play 50th Test which happened to be his farewell Test as well. In 2008, Sumon scored 11 and 2 runs in both of his innings against South Africa in Dhaka.
Incumbent Test skipper Mushfiqur Rahim followed the trend with 9 and 4 runs against England in the last year in his 50th Test.Another former skipper Mohammad Ashraful whose Test career looked all but ended after 61 Tests, played his 50th Test against West Indies in 2009. He scored just 12 and 3 runs in both of the innings to fail to mark the milestone match.
After these three, two more batsmen would play 50th Test for Bangladesh when they take on Australia in the first Test, slated to begin from August 27 at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
Unarguably these two—Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan– are the finest players Bangladesh have ever produced. Since Tamim open the innings, he would be the fourth player to touch the milestone while Shakib would come as fifth. And expectation would be on them not to follow the trend of the last three batsmen who miserably failed to mark their milestone Test.
Given the form, the fans could bet on both of them to mark the landmark Test in some style. Shakib had hit century in his just last Test against Sri Lanka and the fans would expect him to bring up back-to-back Test century for the first time in his career. In terms of scoring runs, Shakib is just behind Tamim with 3479 runs but his Test average of 40.92 is the best amongst the Bangladeshi batsman who played at least 23 Tests.
Tamim is the highest scorer for Bangladesh in this format as well like ODI and T20 with 3677 runs which comes at an average of 39.53. He had also scored eight Test centuries, highest amongst the Bangladeshi batsman. But his last Test century came against England five Tests and 11 innings ago. In his last Test he was on the verge of scoring the ninth century before being our on 82. So he would be hungry to get another one.
When Habibul Bashar Sumon played his 50th Test, he took just eight years. Ashraful also took eight years to reach the milestone. But Mushfiqur had to wait 11 years to get to this. If everything is okay, Shakib Al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal will play their milestone Test after spending 11 years and 10 years respectively in the international cricket. And not for both of them, but for all of the members in current Bangladesh squad, it would be the first Test against Australia. So the stage is ready to come all guns blazing.
So far 36 batsmen scored centuries in their 50th Test with India’s Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara becoming the latest when he scored century against Sri Lanka early in this month.
It is to see whether Shakib and Tamim could increase the number or follow the trend that the last three Bangladeshi batmen showed!
