Mehboob Alam is already a golden record book of Nepali cricket; and the 29-year-old allrounder from Rajbiraj put yet another feather on his cap Wednesday by becoming the first Nepali bowler to claim 100 international one-day wickets.
On Wednesday at Navile, Italy, when Argentine batsman Grant Dugmore edged Alam to Mahesh Chhetri, little did he know that he was a milestone wicket for the left-arm bowler. Mehboob went on to pick another wicket in his 63rd international match to take his total wicket tally to 101.
“I will consider myself very fortunate if I became the first bowler to take 100 wickets in one-dayers for Nepal,” Mehboob, who only wanted two more wickets to reach the milestone, had said before leaving for Italy. “When I began my international cricket, I never thought I would ever reach near this milestone. But after playing Emerging Nations’ Tournaments in 2003, my wickets count went high and then I thought it could be possible.”
He had 18 wickets from 12 matches before the Emerging Nations Tournaments, but he took 15 wickets in five matches, including 8/23 against Maldives, that boosted his morale.
The turning point of his bowling career came in 2008 in Jersey when he took all 10 wickets in a match against Mozambique — an extraordinary performance that had never happened in ICC sanctioned one-day cricket match before.
Roy Dias, Nepal’s coach for a decade, considered Mehboob’s performance as a big achievement. “This is big achievement for Nepal,” he said.
And, Mehboob also leads the table for highest number of wides bowled by Nepali bowler — 112 which is much higher than 59 by Binod Das.
To add to these records, he also has top three bowling performances in a match for his country and besides, he is a hard-hitting batsman who has scored 904 runs with an average of 21. His career hit of boundaries is 119, out of which 18 are sixes.
“Batting is a plus-point to my cricket,” he says. “If I had not been a batsman, I would have been out of the team long ago.” Mehboob modeled himself on former Pakistani great Wasim Akram and is a crowd favorite in Nepal. Such is a support to him by home crowd that the curator of TU Cricket Ground — the main cricket ground of the nation named an end on him.