Bangladesh cricketer Shakib Al Hasan is the leading all-rounder of his era, whose laundry list of achievements is rivalled only by his disciplinary infractions and his brief political career under his country’s loathed ex-leader.
Shakib has been the driving force of his team’s rise to become serious international contenders, enthralling fans through both star turns and scandals. He remains the only player to have topped the International Cricket Council all-rounder rankings in all three formats simultaneously.
Now 37, Shakib is still performing – he took three second-innings wickets as Bangladesh beat Pakistan for the first time in Tests on Sunday. Selectors have tolerated his transgressions and occasional defiance as the price of sporting glories that in 2022 saw him named his country’s greatest athlete by eminent Bangladeshi sports journalists.
“Cricket in Bangladesh is divided into two eras: before and after Shakib Al Hasan,” veteran sports reporter Montu Kayser told AFP last year.
Of the many controversies in Shakib’s career, none have dogged him like his decision to contest sham elections in January under autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina. A student-led uprising ousted Hasina this month, with the leader fleeing the country for neighbouring India.
The cricketer was in Canada playing in a T20 league as he lost his lawmaker job during the revolution. He has not returned home since. Along with dozens more members of Hasina’s Awami League, a murder case has been filed against Shakib that accuses him of culpability in the police killing of protesters.
Shakib has not spoken publicly about the case, but his teammates have rallied around him. “As a teammate and a brother, I will be there during his tough times,” veteran batsman Mushfiqur Rahim said on Facebook this week. “I do not support the false allegations made against him.”
Shakib made his international debut aged just 19 in 2006, as a batting all-rounder against Zimbabwe. He had already become a star by the time he hit a fifty against India in the following year’s World Cup in a David-and-Goliath victory still spoken of reverentially by Bangladesh fans.
His remarkable 7-36 in a losing effort against New Zealand sealed his Test spot in 2008.
Two years later he led Bangladesh to their first ODI series win over a leading cricket nation, with a 4-0 home sweep of New Zealand.
Shakib struggled under the pressure of the captaincy so early in his career, and was sacked after a disappointing tour of Zimbabwe in 2011. By 2014, his relationship with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) reached its lowest ebb. Shakib’s ill discipline had seen him threaten a spectator with a bat. He then made a lewd gesture to a television crew and was banned by the BCB for three ODIs.
A running dispute with coach Chandika Hathurusinghe and a decision to compete in the Caribbean Premier League without BCB clearance led to a six-month suspension.
Shakib’s sanction was lifted early after apologising and pledging to “behave in a more mature way”.
“Nothing can be more painful than staying away from cricket,” he said.
Shakib scored a century and took 10 wickets in his comeback Test against Zimbabwe, becoming only the third cricketer to achieve the all-round feat after Imran Khan and Ian Botham.
In 2017, he scored a century to bail out Bangladesh from a precarious 33-4 to a remarkable five-wicket win over New Zealand in Cardiff.
Shakib reached his pinnacle at the 2019 World Cup in England, where he made 606 runs and claimed 11 wickets, an all-rounder record for the tournament.
But he also continued to court controversy.
While Shakib was leading a players’ strike for better pay in 2019, the ICC slapped him with a two-year ban for failing to report corrupt approaches by bookmakers.
Soon after his return he was again named Test and Twenty20 skipper, but in 2022 the BCB forced him to abandon a partnership with an offshore betting site.
The following year he was a guest at the opening of a boutique jeweller in Dubai, despite Bangladeshi police informing him the store’s proprietor was a fugitive accused of murder.
Kayser likened Shakib to a “king with many thorns in his crown”.
“But,” he added, “the thorns cannot stop him from ruling his world”.