Thursday, July 6th, Bangladesh ODI captain Tamim Iqbal announced his retirement from international cricket, abruptly ending a 16-year career at the highest level. The veteran batsman missed the one-off Test against Afghanistan last month due to a back injury, but he was available for the ODI series. He played in the first One-Day International on Wednesday but has now retired with immediate effect. This important decision was made just three months before the ODI World Cup in India. Litton Das, who captained the solitary Test against Afghanistan, is Tamim’s deputy in the 50-over format, but it remains to be seen if he will assume the ODI captaincy.
“It was not a sudden decision. I have been in talks with my family. I always have said I played to fulfill the dream of my father,” Tamim said in a teary-eyed press conference.
“I don’t have much to say. One thing I will definitely say is, I tried my best. I did try my best. Maybe I was not good enough or good enough. I don’t know. But I tried my 100% whenever I was in the field,” Tamim said.
The match on Wednesday was his 241st ODI, a format in which he has scored 8313 runs, the most for Bangladesh. Only Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are the only active cricketers with more runs scored. Tamim is the second-highest run scorer for Bangladesh in Test cricket, with a total of 5134 runs in 70 appearances. Tamim also played in 87 Twenty20 Internationals before retiring from the format in July 2022. He retires not only as one of Bangladesh’s greatest all-format batters, but also as the only player from his country to achieve a century in Tests, ODIs, and T20Is.
Having made his ODI debut in early 2007, the 34-year-old left-handed batter has been one of the team’s batting foundations. The first of his 56 ODI half-centuries was scored against India at the ODI World Cup that year, when Bangladesh startled their fellow Asians. His first ODI century didn’t come until a year later, but he saved his best for an extraordinary contest against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. Charles Coventry matched the previous highest ODI total of 194 (along with Saeed Anwar), but Bangladesh secured the win in pursuit of 313 thanks to Tamim’s 138-ball 154 that was the catalyst for the victory. In 2020, he even surpassed that with a score of 158 in a narrow victory over the same opposition.
Tamim took over as full-time ODI captain from Mashrafe Mortaza in March 2020 during the home series against Zimbabwe and has led the team to 21 victories in 37 contests. Even in the longest format, the overture made an impression. In 2009, he scored his maiden Test century against the West Indies in Kingstown, in Bangladesh’s first-ever overseas Test victory. In 2015, he scored 206 runs off only 278 deliveries against Pakistan in Khulna for an effortless century total of 10.
