Pak vs Ban: Saud Shakeel creates new Asian record

Pakistan’s left-handed middle-order batter Saud Shakeel broke India’s Vinod Kambli’s long-standing record in the opening Test match against Bangladesh here at Pindi Cricket Stadium.

He achieved the feat of scoring the most number of runs by an Asian batter after 20 Test innings, going past India’s Kambli, who had 1,056 runs after as many innings.

Saud amassed the milestone when he breached the 90-run barrier amid his marathon knock against Bangladesh. Prior to this innings, he had 967 runs to his name in 19 outings.

Besides Saud Shakeel and Vinod Kambli, the only other batters to accumulate more than one thousand runs after 20 Test innings are India’s Mayank Agarwal and Cheteshwar Pujara and Pakistan’s Saeed Ahmed.

Overall, Saud Shakeel is 17th on the list of batters with the most Test runs after 20 innings, led by one of the greats to ever play the game, Don Bradman.

The current part of the all-time elusive list are England’s Harry Brook with 1,181 runs and Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne, who scored 1,166.

Yesterday, Saud Shakeel also became the joint-fastest Pakistan batter to amass 1000 runs in Test cricket.