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.
Mehboob Alam bowls against Argentina. Photo by International Cricket Council
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.
Mehboob Alam. Photo by International Cricket Council.
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.