It seemed that landing Virat Kohli as a guest on his Facebook live chat shows would be the biggest headline-grabber for Bangladesh ODI captain Tamim Iqbal. But after a nearly half-hour chat with the Indian legend on Monday night, Tamim namechecked an all-time great in Pakistan’s Sultan of Swing Wasim Akram, who the Bangladesh skipper said will appear as a special guest on his next episode on Tuesday night.
Tonight’s episode will be a throwback as it will feature former Bangladesh stars Minhajul Abedin, Khaled Masud and Akram Khan, who is also Tamim’s uncle.
“We will try to make the next episode tomorrow [Tuesday] a longer one,” Tamim said as part of his closing message to fans after bidding Kohli goodbye. “Let me announce it now. There will be a small surprise tomorrow as well. Well, it’s not small but a very big surprise. We will have Khaled Masud, Minhajul Abedin and Akram Khan tomorrow as guests. And as special guest, we will have Wasim Akram.
“Many local coaches have told me that if I could talk to Wasim Akram about bowling tips, then they could learn something.”
Wasim, who has taken 414 Test wickets for Pakistan and is widely acknowledged to be in the very topmost echelon of fast bowlers in cricket history, is now a respected commentator following his retirement from the game in 2003. He was also the captain of the side that lost to Bangladesh – the country’s first major upset win – in a 1999 World Cup match in England.
The three main guests – wicketkeeper Masud, batsman and now chief selector Minhajul and former captain and current chief of BCB’s cricket operations committee Akram Khan – were all part of Bangladesh cricket’s early days as a side making the climb up from Associate Member status to Full Member in the ICC. All three had been part of the team that won the ICC Trophy in Kuala Lumpur in 1997, which set the stage for Bangladesh cricket to reach the level it is at today.
“Since Wasim Akram will be there, we will talk about the 1999 World Cup,” Tamim said. “Plus, since the three of them [Akram, Minhajul and Masud] will be there we will also talk about the 1997 ICC Trophy.”
Before Kohli’s episode of the series Tamim had started on May 2 in order to keep the fans entertained during the halt in sports caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Tamim hosted another Indian star in opener Rohit Sharma on Friday.
Tamim had earlier hinted that there will be a big surprise on his next live session at the end of Saturday’s episode featuring Bangladesh teammates Soumya Sarkar, Liton Das, Mominul Haque and Taijul Islam.
Tamim had begun the live chat series with Bangladesh wicketkeeper-batsman Mushfiqur Rahim, and followed it up with episodes featuring Mahmudullah Riyad, former skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, fast bowlers Rubel Hossain and Taskin Ahmed, before moving on to an episode with former Bangladesh cricketers and captains Khaled Mahmud, Habibul Bashar, and Naimur Rahman.
His first foreign guest was South Africa captain Faf du Plessis last Wednesday.
