On March 31, 1986, Bangladesh met Pakistan in their first-ever international match and they were defeated by 7 wickets in that contest. Bangladesh have played 123 Tests, 385 ODIs, and 99 Twenty20 Internationals since their international debut more than three decades ago. Tigers’ national side won 179, lost 402, drew 17, and 9 had no outcomes out of 607 international matches. Bangladesh have had 18 captains so far, across all the formats, with Mashrafe Mortaza being the only one who led the team in more than 100 games. This article discusses, who is the best Bangladesh cricket captain of all time?
The records
There have been some good skippers through the years, which makes selecting one difficult. Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu (7), Minhazul Abedin (2), Akram Khan (15), Aminul Islam Bulbul (16), and Naimur Rahman Durjoy (11) all struggled as Bangladesh captains in the beginning. Among them, Akram Khan won one match while Aminul Islam Bulbul won two matches as captain for Bangladesh.
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Later, Khaled Mashud and Khaled Mahmud captained Bangladesh in 42 and 24 matches, respectively. Bangladesh won four matches under Mashud's captaincy, but not a single match under Mahmud's captaincy.
Bangladesh started tasting that winning feeling even close to consistently since Habibul Bashar took over as captain of the national side in 2004. Bangladesh also won its first Test match under his leadership in 2005. Habibul Bashar captained the team tigers in 87 matches, winning 30 of them and losing 53. Habibul is the third-best captain in terms of wins and unquestionably one of the best captains in Bangladesh cricket history.
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Mohammad Ashraful led the Bangladesh national team as captain from 2007 to 2009. Bangladesh only won ten under his captaincy out of 62 matches. He was known to be an inconsistent skipper, similar to batter Ashraful.
Mushfiqur Rahim led the Bangladesh national team in some format or the other for six years in a row from 2011 to 2017. Bangladesh won 26 games and lost 56 under his captaincy. In terms of numbers, he led Bangladesh in the second most matches (94). Interestingly Bangladesh won its highest number of Tests under his leadership, including two historic Tests against England and Australia when Mushfiqur was captain.
Bangladesh won its second-most matches (33) under Shakib Al Hasan's leadership. Shakib captained the team in a total of 85 games, and won 38.82% of their matches. They lost 51 matches when Shakib was in charge.
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Mashrafe Mortaza captained Bangladesh in the most matches (117). Despite captaining for the first time in 2009, Mashrafe led the Bangladesh limited-over teams on a consistent basis from 2015 to the 2019 World Cup. The Bangladesh national cricket team evolved dramatically under his leadership during this period. Team Tigers won the most ODIs (50) and T20Is (10) matches when he was the captain. He is the only one who comes even close to a win rate above 50% (60/117). So 'Mash' is the only one who can say that under him, we won a majority of our games. That's why many people consider Mashrafe is the best Bangladesh cricket captain ever.
Tamim Iqbal (13), Mahmudullah Riyad (20), and Mominul Haque (8) are the current captains of Bangladesh ODI, T20I, and Test respectively. Their contribution as captains may be evaluated after a few more years.
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Verdict
We have evaluated the records of all captains in order to identify who is the best Bangladesh cricket captain? Mashrafe Mortaza has proven to be the most successful captain, which is why he is known as Captain Fantastic. However, the majority of Mashrafe's success as captain came in the ODI format. Bangladesh have always performed well in limited-overs cricket, and team tigers has had a lot of success in the international arena in the last 6/7 years thanks to Mashrafe's leadership qualities. However, no skipper has a decent record in the other two formats, and Bangladesh is yet to master the formula of getting consistent success in the T20 and Test formats.