After Afghanistan became the Champions of the inaugural Desert Twenty20 Challenge, swashbuckling batsman Mohammad Shahzad joined the history books by giving his best in the recently concluded tournament in United Arab Emirates.
The Nangarhar-born 28-year-old batsman, who has a liking for Indian wicket-keeper batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his wide array of shots, achieved a rare feat while scoring two half-centuries in two international games on the same day for Afghanistan.
Shahzad also became the first international batsman to score two half-centuries on the same day.
The hard-hitting wicket-keeper batsman scored an unbeaten 52 off 40 balls in the Desert T20 final against Ireland before smashing 80 runs against Oman in the semi-final game.
The batting powerhouse for Afghanistan, Shahzad scored 207 runs in the T20 tournament at an average of 52.00 while having a strike-rate of 121 with two fifties.
The Desert T20 Cup, which was scheduled from January 14-20 in Dubai, included eight associate teams as Oman, Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, Namibia, Hong Kong, Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates.
Shahzad stands as joint fourth batsman with Rohit Sharma while having 11 fifties on his back in T20Is.
Indian skipper Virat Kohli has 16 fifties, Kiwis’ Brendon McCullum, Sri Lanka’s Tillakaratne Dilshan and West Indies’ T20 specialist Chris Gayle have scored 13 fifties followed by Australia’s David Warner, who has 12 half-centuries.
Rising among the ranks, Shahzad, who is a run away from Kohli’s 1,657 runs in T20Is, went past Shoaib Malik’s 1,548, followed by Mohammad Hafeez (1,615) and South Africa’s middle-order batsman JP Duminy’s 1,654 runs.
Shahzad is placed at seventh in the all-time individual run-getters chart in T20Is, which is led by former New Zealand wicket-keeper batsman Brendon McCullum with 2,140 followed by 1,806 from TM Dilshan, 1,806 runs from Martin Guptill, 1,690 from Umar Akmal and David Warner’s tally of 1,686.
The right-handed batsman Shahzad has been the architect for Afghanistan in the recent past while impressing the Afghanistan Cricket Board with his pro-activeness on the field.
In his 55 T20I appearances for Afghanistan, Shahzad has scored 1,656 runs at an average of 31.84 which included one hundred and 11 fifties.
Afghanistan side sits comfortably at No. 9 in the ICC T20I Rankings and 10th in ODIs.