Readers of the November issue of TWC will have noted that the second winner of TWC’s Test Player of the Year was not Gautam Gambhir, Graeme Smith, Andrew Strauss or the previous winner Brett Lee, but Bangladesh’s 22-year-old allrounder Shakib Al Hasan. This was no miscarriage, no distortion of statistics and no fluke – Shakib took three five-fors in four innings against South Africa and Sri Lanka with his left-arm spin, and scored 96 twice, against Sri Lanka and West Indies – the latter a series-winning innings while stand-in captain.

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