The now grizzled Bangladesh veteran was so fresh faced in 2005, he could have passed for 12
Andrew Miller19-Nov-2025Some Test cricketers just look startlingly, stop-in-your-tracks young when they first take the field, especially when their baby-faced features are set against the grandeur of an ancient, storied venue such as Lord’s. Sachin Tendulkar was one such player, all fluff and so little obvious substance until he streaked around the outfield to claim an astonishing catch in Graham Gooch’s 333 Test in 1990. A mere 15 years later, and back at the same venue in May 2005, Mushfiqur Rahim was another.Though the records now state that he had turned 18 earlier that month, Mushfiqur was assumed at the time to be 16, while he could have been passed off for 12 without anyone missing a beat. He was tiny, and by rights he should have been overawed. He was playing in the most auspicious Test of Bangladesh’s then-short and deeply painful history, and was up against an England team that has rarely presented a more daunting challenge.As if it wasn’t bad enough to be nursing a record of 31 defeats in 36 prior Tests – and 20 of those by an innings – Bangladesh had arrived in early-season England to face an England side with far bigger fish to fry. The seminal 2005 Ashes was on the horizon, and this contest was less a warm-up, more a canapé. In Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, Simon Jones and Matthew Hoggard, the hosts had at their disposal arguably the greatest four-prong seam attack they’d ever compiled, and twin totals of 108 and 159 across 78.1 overs spoke of a team in an indecent hurry to get on with their main event.One man – one boy, rather – did his utmost to hold Bangladesh up. With time on the ball that shamed the hustled jabs and thrashes of his senior team-mates, and a thirst for the fight that belied every stereotype that his demeanour might have attracted, Mushfiqur endured for 85 minutes, making 19 from 56 balls in the first innings – one of only three double-figure scores. It wasn’t riches, but that was rather the point. It was resistance, a flicker of friction that hinted that he could yet be here to stay, unlike so many of the unready contenders that had already been chewed up and spat out in their team’s invidious circumstances.Mushfiqur Rahim received commemorative jerseys ahead of his 100th Test on Wednesday•BCBMushfiqur – the Mighty Atom, as he would soon become known – had earned his opportunity through his sheer (and rare) weight of runs in Bangladesh’s warm-up games. In his first outing of the tour, against a Sussex 2nd XI at Hove, his second-innings 63 had been the solitary crumb of comfort in a grotesque team display, one which led Dav Whatmore, their gruff and paternalistic head coach, to offer an apology to his hosts after an innings-and-226-run defeat.Then, at Northamptonshire’s Wantage Road – the scene, a mere six years earlier, of the World Cup triumph over Pakistan that had catapulted Bangladesh’s premature claims for Test status – Mushfiqur followed up with a cultured 115 not out from 167 balls, albeit against a similarly unrepresentative attack that had him admitting, at the close of play, that his first interview on the BBC World Service was the more daunting of his day’s duties.And now, 20 years and 100 Test caps later, Mushfiqur shares even more in common with Tendulkar, not simply because of his longevity, but because of what he has represented in between whiles, in his country’s long march to recognition within the sport. If Tendulkar’s tale encapsulates India’s economic flourishing and the sense of a nation growing into its supernova status, then Mushfiqur’s is, in its own way, an even more significant microcosm.It’s a tale of tenacity and optimism, and the vindication of youth in the face of overwhelming experience. Even amid the pallid horrors of Bangladesh’s early Test scorecards, it’s easy to forget the narratives that accompanied them. The calls for their status to be rescinded, and the borderline contempt with which their matches were covered. In the Asian Test Championship in September 2001, two Sri Lanka batters, Marvan Atapattu and Mahela Jayawardene, had effectively retired bored after reaching 201 and 150 respectively, and at a time long before T20 cricket had captured the zeitgeist, the notion that Bangladesh’s status cheapened Test cricket was overpowering.Mushfiqur Rahim has been a pillar of the Bangladesh team for 20 out of 25 years of its existence•Associated PressWith no first-class structure – let alone anything resembling an academy or even a serviceable indoor school – and only a handful of senior pros such as Habibul Bashar and Javed Omar to provide the short-term ballast, the only realistic option available to Bangladesh was to take a punt on its youth, and hope that a handful of likely lads would be able to last the course.With the likes of Mashrafe Mortaza, Shakib Al Hasan and Tamim Iqbal also enduring the sink-or-swim approach, Bangladesh ended up being extraordinarily well served in that regard – and when all four combined to eliminate India from the 2007 World Cup, the sense of a future taking shape before our eyes was palpable. None, however, could come close to matching Mushfiqur’s endurance.He is a grizzled veteran now, with the sort of sage’s beard that would have been comical to even imagine when his fresh face first lined up for a team photo. But astonishingly, he’s been a pillar of this team for 20 out of 25 years of its existence – a timeframe that might have earned him close to double the number of caps had he played for a more fashionable country, or even been permitted to play in series of longer than two Tests.It’s a mark of his longevity that Mushfiqur featured in 56 series all told, with more still to come seeing as he’s going nowhere yet at the age of 38. Tendulkar, by contrast, played 73 across his 200-cap, 24-year career; James Anderson, who played 188 in 21, played 67. At the other end of the endurance scale, there’s England’s former captain, Andrew Strauss. He too played in 100 Tests, but his all came to pass in a mere eight years, and across 29 series.It just goes to show how big the gulf in opportunity remains in a sport that has never been well disposed towards the little guy. But when you think back to that origin story at Lord’s, it’s hard to imagine how Bangladesh could have stood as tall as it has since managed to do, without his five-foot-nothing presence standing front and centre.
