Afghanistan cricket team captain and star spinner Rashid Khan has created history on Monday after taking the highest number of wickets in T20Is. Khan took 165 wickets in just 98 matches and broke the record of New Zealand fast bowler Tim Southee, who took 164 wickets in 126 matches.
On Monday, Afghanistan beat UAE by 38 runs in the tri-series played in Sharjah. In this match Rashid Khan took 3 wickets and gave 21 runs.
Rashid Khan, 26, was born in 1998 in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. His family lived in Pakistan during his childhood, where he developed an interest in cricket. He came into international cricket in 2015 when he played against Zimbabwe. Soon, he became the fastest bowler to take 100 ODI and 100 T20I wickets. He also led Afghanistan to victory in Test cricket and took both five-wicket and ten-wicket hauls. He is known for his fast-bowling, varied leg spin, which batsmen are usually unable to recognise. He is also a brilliant fielder.
In 2017, Rashid Khan played for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL and took 93 wickets in five years. He joined Gujarat Titans in 2022 and played an important role in helping the team win the title. He also took a hat-trick in the league.
Afghanistan made a comeback in the match after this victory, having lost their first match to Pakistan. In this match, UAE won the toss and decided to bowl first. At the start of the match, Afghanistan didn’t bat well. Opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz scored only 7 runs, but after that, Sediqullah Atal and Ibrahim Zadran shared an 84-run partnership and provided a strong base for their team.
Sediqullah Atal made 54 runs in just 40 balls, securing the first half-century of his cricket career. Similarly, Ibrahim Zadran, with the help of four sixes and three fours, made 63 runs off 40 balls.
Karim Janat and Azmatullah Umarzai also played well. Karim scored 23 not out off 10 balls, hitting two sixes and two fours. Azmatullah scored 20 runs not out off 12 balls, including two sixes. Afghanistan scored 188 runs in 20 overs for the loss of 4 wickets. Muhammad Rohid and Saghir Khan took two wickets each for UAE.
On the other side, UAE started well. Their captain Muhammad Wasim scored 67 runs off 37 balls, including six sixes and four fours. Rahul Chopra also played well, scoring 52 runs off 35 balls. But after Wasim’s dismissal, the UAE team couldn’t hold their ground and returned to the pavilion quickly. Rashid Khan took three important wickets.
Eventually, the UAE team fell 38 runs short of the target in 20 overs, and Afghanistan won the match by 38 runs.
Before the match began, UAE and Afghanistan players observed a minute of silence and wore black armbands to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, August 31, 2025. The 6.0-magnitude tremor, which hit at 11:47 pm local time near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province close to the Pakistan border, claimed over 800 lives and injured more than 2,500 people, many of them women and children.
