Tamim Iqbal, the Bangladesh batsman, got his first taste of county cricket after signing for Nottinghamshire in June 2011 as a short-term replacement for David Hussey who had returned to Australia to prepare for an ODI series against Sir Lanka.
Tamim, then 22, had a Test average of 40.13 and the previous summer had scored a century in each of two Tests against England, at Lord's and Old Trafford. He was only the second Bangladeshi to play county cricket in England (Shakib Al Hasan was the first).
During his time at Trent Bridge, Tamim played in five T20 matches, scoring 104 runs with a highest score of 47. Tamim, whose batting was described in the Nottingham Post as "solid if unspectacular", remarked of his performance that "It could have been better, but it wasn't too bad".
His figures, though, did not reflect his standing within the game – that same season he was named as one of Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year and as Test Player of the Year, ahead of Graeme Swann and Virender Sewag, He was vice-captain of his country in all three formats of the game – and has scored centuries in each format – and captained the Bangladeshi ODI team.
He is currently the highest run-scorer for Bangladesh in international cricket, including Test matches, ODIs and Twenty20 Internationals. He is the second Bangladeshi cricketer to score 3,000 runs in Tests and 5,000 runs in ODIs and the first to pass 1,000 runs in T20Is. He played his 200th ODI match for Bangladesh during the 2019 Cricket World Cup.
May 2020