Shakib only Bangladeshi player to find place in ICC ODI XI of decade

Ace all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan was the only Bangladeshi player to find the place in the International Cricket Council (ICC) ODI XI of the decade.

Based on the performance of the past decade, the ICC announced the XI of all three formats of cricket on Sunday. While Shakib, currently the No.1 all-rounder of the ICC ODI rankings found the place in the ODI format, no Bangladeshi players were featured in the other two formats.

Journalists and broadcasters of the ICC Voting Academy had exercised their votes to pick up the best team of the decade. They have selected this team on the basis of performance from January 1, 2010 to October 7, 2020.

Shakib made his ODI debut in 2006 and while the debut was not an extraordinary one, he grew from strength to strength. His landmark performance came in the 2007 World Cup after which he didn’t look back as he established him as the finest player of Bangladesh.

In the 2019 World Cup, he broke all kinds of possible records, scoring 606 runs and taking 11 wickets to become the first player in the cricket’s extravaganza to earn the double of 500 plus runs and 10 plus wickets.

In 2009, he was first crowned No.1 ODI all-rounder and most of the time in the decade he held this spot. Even he is going to end the 2020 as the No.1 all-rounder.

Shakib played 131 ODIs from 2010 to 2020. At this time, he has scored 4,276 runs in batting with an average of 38.87. He had five centuries under his belt during this period. In the past decade, he however claimed 177 wickets at an average of 30.15. His best bowling figure was 5-29 which came against Afghanistan in the 2019 World Cup.

Overall, in his career, he played 206 matches in which he scored 6,323 runs at an average of 37.86 with nine centuries. In bowling he took 260 wickets.

India’s 2011 World Cup winning captain MS Dhoni has been named as the skipper of the ICC ODI Team of the Decade. MS Dhoni was earlier also named the skipper of the ICC T20I Team of the Decade.

There are two other Indian players to make it to the list of the ODI team of the decade and that is Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. India, with three players in the list, leads the playing XI.

There are two Australians in the list in the form of opening batsman David Warner and fast bowler Mitchell Starc.

The only other country to have more than one player in the list is South Africa. Batsman AB de Villiers and spinner Imran Tahir have made it to the list from the Proteas.

ICC Men’s ODI team of the decade: Rohit Sharma, David Warner, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Shakib Al-Hasan, MS Dhoni (c, wk), Ben Stokes, Mitchell Starc, Trent Boult, Imran Tahir and Lasith Malinga.-BSS