Mohammad Nafees Iqbal Khan (Bengali: মোহাম্মদ নাফিস ইকবাল খান; born 31 January 1985), better known as Nafees Iqbal, is a former Bangladeshi international cricketer.[1] He played as a right-handed opening batsman, and was a part-time right-arm medium pace bowler.[2]
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Mohammad Nafees Iqbal Khan | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 31 January 1985 Chittagong, Bangladesh | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Batting | Right-handed | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling | Right-arm medium | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Relations |
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| International information | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| National side |
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Test debut (cap 38) | 19 October 2004 v New Zealand | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Test | 8 March 2006 v Sri Lanka | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ODI debut (cap 70) | 7 November 2003 v England | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Last ODI | 18 June 2005 v Australia | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ODI shirt no. | 95 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Domestic team information | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Khelaghar Samaj Kallyan Samity | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
Source: CricInfo, 8 May 2022 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Biography
Nafees Iqbal Khan was born to footballer Iqbal Khan and mother Nusrat Iqbal Khan, in the port city of Chittagong. His paternal Khan family is a prestigious family in the city, migrated from Bihar.[3][4] Nafees Iqbal is the elder brother of Tamim Iqbal and the nephew of former Bangladesh captain Akram Khan, who both played Test cricket for Bangladesh.[5]
Career
He represented Bangladesh U19 team in youth level and captained the national side at the 2002 Under-19 Cricket World Cup.[6]
He rose to limelight and prominence after scoring a hundred (118 off 168 balls) for Bangladesh A against the touring England team in 2003–04 and he was disparaging towards the England spinners which he faced, commenting their spinners as "ordinary".[7][8] His comments drew more press attention than his batting.[9] He also played for Bangladesh during the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy.[10]
His only Test century came in January 2005, one which aided Bangladesh towards their first-ever series victory, 1–0 against Zimbabwe.[11][12] However he couldn't achieve better milestones like his brother Tamim Iqbal during his short playing career and was dropped from the national team in 2006 following a string of poor scores.[13] His last international match came in April 2006 which was a test match against Australia. In 2020, one of the friends of Nafees Iqbal revealed that Tamim Iqbal's success was primarily due to the sacrifice of his older brother Nafees.[14][15]
In 2016, he was appointed as team manager of Khulna Titans in the Bangladesh Premier League.[16] Nafees was recruited in by the management team of the Mumbai Indians for the 2018 Indian Premier League season as a translator for his fellow Bangladeshi seamer Mustafizur Rahman.[17][18][19] His role as a translator was also credited in the 2019 Netflix original webseries Cricket Fever: Mumbai Indians.[20]
Personal life
He is the elder brother of cricketer Tamim Iqbal and the nephew of former cricketer Akram Khan. On 20 June 2020, he was reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 and has been kept in self isolation at his residence in Chittagong.[needs update][21][22][23]