Rashid Khan

Rashid Khan Arman is an Afghan international cricketer and the captain of the Afghanistan national team in the Twenty20 International (T20I) format, born on 20 September 1998 in Nangarhar Province. He bowls right-arm leg spin and bats aggressively right-handed, and plays franchise cricket for Gujarat Titans in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Adelaide Strikers in Australia's Big Bash League (BBL), Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistan Super League (PSL), Band-e-Amir Dragons in Afghanistan's Shpageeza Cricket League and MI New York in Major League Cricket. ^{1 2 3 4}

He was one of the eleven cricketers who played in Afghanistan's first Test match, against India in June 2018. In September 2019 he led Afghanistan in the one-off Test against Bangladesh and, at 20 years and 350 days, became the youngest cricketer to captain a Test match team. ¹

Rashid Khan was born in 1998 into a Shinwari Pashtun family in Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan; his family, including ten siblings, comes from Jalalabad and owned a tyre business in Nangarhar until the Afghan war, and the family fled the war and lived in Pakistan for a few years. He grew up playing cricket with his brothers and idolised the Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi, after whom he stylised his bowling action, and the South African batter AB de Villiers. He attended Islamia College Peshawar, where he studied computer science until 2013, and came to prominence in 2014 in matches in Peshawar during an Afghan team tour of Pakistan. ¹

He was married on 3 October 2024 in Kabul, sharing the occasion with three of his brothers, who also married on the same day. ¹

He made his One Day International (ODI) debut for Afghanistan against Zimbabwe on 18 October 2015 and his T20I debut, also against Zimbabwe, on 26 October 2015. In June 2017 he took 7 wickets for 18 runs against the West Indies, the best ODI bowling figures by a player for an associate nation. In February 2018 he became the youngest player to top the ICC Player Rankings for bowlers in ODIs, and later the same month he also topped the T20I bowler rankings; in September 2018 he became the number one player in the ICC's ODI all-rounder rankings after the Asia Cup. ¹

In March 2018, during the Cricket World Cup Qualifier, he captained Afghanistan in an ODI for the first time at 19 years and 165 days, becoming the youngest player to captain an international team, and in the final of that tournament he became the fastest and youngest bowler to take 100 ODI wickets, reaching the mark in 44 matches. In October 2021 he also became the fastest bowler, in terms of matches, to take 100 T20I wickets, in his 53rd match, and he holds the record for the most wickets in men's T20 International cricket, passing Tim Southee's previous record of 164 in September 2025. ¹

He played in Afghanistan's inaugural Test against India in June 2018, returning the most expensive bowling figures by a debutant in a nation's maiden Test. Captaining the Test side against Bangladesh in September 2019, he became the first Afghan bowler to take a ten-wicket haul in a Test and the first cricketer to score a fifty and take ten wickets in his debut match as Test captain. ¹

In April 2019 the Afghanistan Cricket Board named him T20I captain and ODI vice-captain, and after the 2019 World Cup he was appointed captain across all formats, before Asghar Afghan was reappointed in December 2019. He was again named T20I captain in July 2021, stepped down after the 2021 T20 World Cup squad was named, saying the selection committee had not gained his consent for the team, and was once again appointed T20I captain in December 2022, succeeding Mohammad Nabi, who had resigned after the 2022 T20 World Cup. He captained Afghanistan at the 2024 T20 World Cup. ¹

In February 2017 he was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad for the IPL, one of the two first Afghan players ever selected for the league, alongside Mohammad Nabi, and he later played as vice-captain of Gujarat Titans, taking an IPL hat-trick in April 2023. In the Caribbean Premier League he took the competition's first hat-trick, for Guyana Amazon Warriors in September 2017. With Adelaide Strikers he won the 2017–18 Big Bash League, took a BBL hat-trick in January 2020, and in January 2022, in his 300th Twenty20 match, took six wickets for 17 runs, his career-best figures. He has also played for Lahore Qalandars in the PSL, for Sussex and the Trent Rockets in England, and for MI New York in Major League Cricket. On 20 August 2020, at 21 years and 335 days, he became the youngest and fastest bowler to take 300 wickets in Twenty20 cricket. ¹

The ICC named him Associate Cricketer of the Year for 2017, and in December 2020 he was named the ICC Men's T20I Cricketer of the Decade. ¹

His public significance lies in his standing as the leading wicket-taker in men's T20 International history, his series of youngest-and-fastest bowling records, his captaincy of Afghanistan, and his role — alongside Mohammad Nabi — as one of the first two Afghan players in the IPL, which carried Afghan cricket to franchise audiences worldwide. ¹

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