Iqbal is now Bangladesh’s highest run-scorer in Test history

Image courtesy of: NDTV

Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal surpassed former captain Habibul Bashar to become the country’s highest run-scorer in Tests.

Iqbal accomplished the feat on the fourth day of the one-off Test against India.

The 26-year-old scored 19 runs before being dismissed, but it was enough to carry him past Bashar’s haul of 3026 runs.

But, with no announcement being made and not many people in attendance due to the bad weather, Iqbal didn’t celebrate when he surpassed Bashar.

However, Bashar was in Fatullah to witness Iqbal break his record, and told ESPNcricinfo: “I came to the ground early today hoping to see Tamim cross my record. I told him before the Test match that I wanted to see him do it in this game. I didn’t want to wait for too long.

“It is good to see Tamim cross me. It was a long-standing record. I was the highest scorer for a long time actually. But I want Tamim to score at least 10000 runs. I always thought that it would be Shakib or Tamim who would take over my run-scoring record.”

But, Bashar believes that he would have scored a lot more runs if Bangladesh had had access to better facilities during his playing days.

“I could have scored six to seven thousand runs had I been a player these days,” he said. “Facilities now are so much better from the start. I also missed out on a number of hundreds.

“I wish I converted those 24 fifties into more centuries. In my day there was not much competition too for places in the team. Only [Mohammad] Ashraful was around.”