Zimbabwe captain Sikandar Raza scored a crucial 48 off 28 balls in the final overs during his innings in the fourth T20I against India. Thanks to his quick-hitting, Zimbabwe went past 150 and finished on a score of 152.

Zimbabwe reached their final fifty off just 26 balls and Raza played some wonderful shots. His knocks included two fours and three sixes and he played at a strike rate of over 160.

During his career, he joined an elite list of all-rounders who have scored more than 2000 runs and taken 50 wickets in international T20I cricket. He is the fifth all-rounder after Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Nabi, Virandeep Singh and Mohammad Hafeez who has scored more than 2000 runs and taken more than 50 wickets in T20I cricket. Notably, he became the first cricketer to achieve that feat among Zimbabwean players.

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Sikandar Raza joins the elite list of the most versatile

2551, 149 – Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh)
2165, 96 – Mohammad Nabi (Afghanistan)
2320, 66 – Virandeep Singh (Malaysia)
2514, 61 – Mohammad Hafeez (Pakistan)
2001, 65 – Sikandar Raza (Zimbabwe)

Shakib led the list with 149 T20I wickets and 2551 runs. Nabi is second on the list with 96 wickets and 2165. Virandeep Singh’s total of 2320 runs and 66 wickets came in just 78 matches, indicating an impressive strike rate and average, and Raza surpassed 2000 T20I runs in his 90th match and also has 65 T20I wickets.

Sikandar Raza also became the first Zimbabwean cricketer to score 2000 runs in T20Is. He is also the second most wicket-taker in his team, with 65. Raza has been the flag-bearer of Zimbabwean cricket for almost a decade.

He was nominated as the T20I Cricketer of the Year in 2023 after his splendid statistics with both bat and ball. He scored 515 runs in 11 games, while also adding 17 wickets at an economy of 6.57. Last year, he scored nine fifties in his 11 innings.

In 2024, he unfortunately led Zimbabwe in the 2024 T20 World Cup qualifiers but failed to lead them to the 2024 T20 World Cup. Zimbabwe needed to reach the final of the African qualifiers. However, they suffered defeats to Namibia and Uganda and it was those two teams that qualified for the T20 World Cup, knocking out the favourites to qualify from the tournament.

It was not the first time they failed to qualify for the T20 World Cup as they failed to qualify for the tournament in 2009 and 2021 due to withdrawal and suspension. Raza rued the fact that he could not lead his team to qualification in the ICC’s premier event.

Ahead of this series against India, Zimbabwe lost to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the T20I series under Raza’s captaincy.

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