Chased by the blend of criticism and appreciation, Mushfiqur Rahim's Test career has gained another feat -- something he possibly have never even dreamt of.
The back-to-back tons in the ongoing Sri Lanka series have earned him his career-best achievement: the right-handed batter is currently the best in this format of cricket.
His rrecent unbeaten knock of 175 helped post an outstanding average of 58.94 — the highest among the batters who played at least 20 innings since 2020 in Tests. Even batters like Joe Root, Babar Azam and Marnus Labuschagne are behind him.
In this period, Mushfiqur played 13 innings and scored 1,002 runs with three centuries— two are against Sri Lanka in the ongoing series — and four half-centuries.
In the list of the batters who have a 50 or more average in the same period, Lition Das is the second batter from Bangladesh with an average of 50.62. He has scored more than 1,200 runs with three centuries and eight fifties.
These two rescued the Tigers in the Dhaka Test after losing five wickets under 25 runs. On the sixth wicket, they came up with a stand of 282 runs that helped the hosts to post 365 runs that seemed to be impossible on the first morning of the match.
Bangladesh may have failed to come up with an imperious Test display, but these two have been doing remarkably well in the most prestigious format of international cricket.
