Rashid Khan

Born to a Pashtun family in the village of Nangarhar, Afghanistan, the early life of Rashid Khan was spent in a refugee camp in Peshawar. He developed a passion for cricket after watching Shahid Afridi and soon started to idolise him. He moulded himself on his hero's quick-arm action and worked hard to develop different variations to succeed in this cruel batting-dominated sport.

A few months after his 17th birthday, Rashid Khan got the opportunity to represent his country. He made his ODI debut in 2015 against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. The young Afghan leggie didn't take long to make an impression and soon was ruling the roost among the Associate Nations, especially in the shortest version of the game. His bowling figures of 2-1-3-5 against Ireland in a T20I match caught many eyeballs and Rashid Khan found himself in the thick of things for the Hyderabad franchise in the Indian T20 League.

Rashid's career graph ascended and him along with Mohammad Nabi became the two rising stars of Afghanistan. The leggie tumbled many records on his path to success and his 7-wicket haul in an ODI match against West Indies made him the first Associate nation cricketer to achieve this feat. In 2018, ICC named him the Associate Cricketer of the Year and there was no stopping this Afghan tsunami.

Following his success in the Indian T20 League, Rashid signed up with Guyana Amazon Warriors in the CPL and also took the first hat-trick of this tournament. He played for Adelaide Strikers as well in the Big Bash League and was a key part of their successful campaign. The outstanding performance of Rashid Khan coincided with the great success of Afghanistan at the Associate level and soon ICC promoted them to Full Membership and granted them the Test status.

Expectations were quite high from Rashid Khan in the 2019 Cricket World Cup but the Afghan star disappointed and it reflected in the ordinary performance of Afghanistan. But the selectors showed great belief in Rashid's potential and immediately after the mega event, the 20-year-old leg-spinner was handed over the captaincy across all formats of the game. Later on, though, Asghar Afghan was re-appointed as the captain, maybe, to let Rashid concentrate on his bowling.