Rashid Khan becomes the youngest captain to win a T20 title

Rashid Khan led Band-e-Amir Dragons side lifted the 5th edition of Shpageeza Cricket League after defeating the Mis-Ainak Knights in the finals by four runs. With this victory, Rashid Khan became the youngest ever player to captain a team to title victory in the Twenty20 format. The Afghanistan leg-spinner, who celebrated his 19th birthday on Wednesday, led his side today (Friday) in the finals of the tournament. He also became the youngest to captain a side in a Twenty20 tournament final.

The Dragons got off to a great start after electing to bat first as their openers shared a 72-run stand in 9.1 overs for the first wicket. Javed Ahmadi scored a 39-ball 55 while Hazratullah and Shahidullah scored 35 and 22 respectively. From a strong position of scoring anything near 180, the Dragons collapsed as the chinaman spinner Zahir Khan took three wickets to restrict the Band-e-Amir side to 158/7.

The final phase

Some tight bowling and impressive fielding from Dragons brought the equation for the Knights to 42 runs needed from the last two overs. Sikandar Raza and Mohammad Nabi took the advantage of the fact that skipper Rashid Khan completed his quota of four overs before the final three overs. The two all-rounders and Dawlat Zadran struck a few boundaries towards the end but failed when they needed five runs off the final delivery.

With this final, Rashid broke the record to become the youngest captain to feature in a T20 tournament final held by India’s Rohit Motwani. At the age of 19 years and 93 days, Rohit led Maharashtra in the 2010 Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 final and also led them to the victory in that game against Hyderabad. Akshdeep Nath captained Uttar Pradesh in the final of 2014 edition of SM Ali T20 at the age of 20 years and 339 days in which his team went down against Baroda by three runs to finish as runners-up.

Rashid had a great tournament in terms of breaking records as the 19-year-old recently became the 3rd youngest captain ever in Twenty20 cricket when he made his captaincy debut in this tournament. He also became the youngest ever to reach 100 Twenty20 wickets and the joint 2nd quickest to the mark.