Last Updated on 5 years by Charbel Coorey

Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladesh’s star-all rounder and best-ever cricketer, has spoken out about how he “made mistakes” over the past few years. These mistakes he referred to have led to his current ban from international cricket.

Shakib recently spoke about this topic in an interview on ESPNcricinfo’s Cricketbaazi series. The Bangladesh Test and T20I captain accepted three charges handed down by the ICC Anti-Corruption Unit, for failing to report corrupt approaches. These occurred on two occasions in an ODI Tri-Series in 2018 and in an IPL match playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“You have to be honest,” said Shakib. “You just can’t lie to the people and pretend different things. Whatever happened has happened. People are bound to make mistakes. You are not 100%. The important thing is how well you can come back from those mistakes. You can tell other people not to make those mistakes. Tell them the path so that they never take those paths.”

Shakib then stressed the importance of other players learning from him. Now, the 33-year old wants to move forward and do things right in the future.

“It could have happened to someone else and I would have learned from him, but it happened to me so other people can learn from me. I wanted to be honest from the first day. I didn’t hide anything from the guys when they were asking me questions. I will say the straightforward things. I made mistakes. It shouldn’t happen for a player like me. I apologised for it, and I want to move forward, I want everyone to learn from it and never make these mistakes.”

Shakib has never been far away from a controversy or two. He also spoke about some difficult moments back in 2009 and 2010, where he felt BCB weren’t clear on who they wanted as full-time captain, after Mashrafe Mortaza and Mohammad Ashraful suffered injury and form problems respectively. As a result, he lasted seven months in the role, hampered by a disappointing 2011 World Cup campaign and series losses to Zimbabwe.

“I never had to face difficulties due to senior players,” Shakib said. “It was never a problem. We were a team struggling to win consistently, so our focus was to improve our game. Off the field, there were always issues. If you say something in the media, it diverted into another direction. I feel that I needed those things in that time, and it helped me to bring me where I am now.”

Shakib is due back in international cricket from October 29. So, he could feature in Bangladesh’s postponed Test tour of Sri Lanka, as both the BCB and SLC are working to confirm the tour.

Also read:

• Bangladesh could tour Sri Lanka in October for three-match Test series
• IPL 2020 to start on September 19 in UAE
• ICC T20 World Cup officially postponed