Better late than never - thank you for the decision Mushfiqur Rahim!

The much-awaited retirement of Mushfiqur Rahim has finally happened. On Sunday, in a Twitter message, he announced that he had decided to retire from international T20 cricket.

Thus, it ends a career of 15 years and 102 matches. Looking at his career, you'll be surprised how he got this far. How he could be that regular in the T20I team for that long time would really surprise the fans, especially fans of other better T20 sides.

Mushfiq made his debut against Zimbabwe in Harare in 2006. Since then, barring 2018, he never seemed to be a T20 material. 

He scored 1500 runs at an average of 19.48 and a strike rate of 115, which is the lowest in all sectors among batters playing 100+ T20Is.

Mushfiq played against 17 opponents in T20Is. Among them, he could score more than 100 runs against five teams only. He scored 112 runs against the Windies, for which he took 10 innings.

He batted 7 times against South Africa, 9 times against Pakistan, 9 times against New Zealand, 5 times against Ireland and Australia. And he couldn't even manage to accumulate 100 runs against any of these teams. 

He has some decent stats only against Sri Lanka and India.

Mushfiq scored only six half-centuries in his T20 career. People had to wait more than seven years and 26 innings to see a half-century from him. Fans needed to wait another four years and 26 innings to see another half-century from him.

By far, Mushfiqur Rahim's best year as a T20 batter was 2018. Indeed, he played some brilliant knocks that year. He scored 397 runs at an average of 30.53 and a strike rate of 132.33. He scored half of his career half-centuries that year.

The series against Sri Lanka at the beginning of 2018 is where Mushfiq peaked as a T20 batter. Before that, he averaged less than 15. 

And the best surprise here is that he played most of his innings at No. 4 and 5.

In addition, he averages 7.45 in Asia Cup and 17.47 in the T20 World Cup. He could gather only one half-century while playing 35 innings in these tournaments.

Considering these stats, it should be hard for anyone to stop wondering how he got this far.

Well, he had some memorable knocks. A brilliant knock of Mushfiqur Rahim guided Bangladesh's highest score and chase. He was in insane form for the whole Nidahas Trophy.

His dependable bat also steered Bangladesh's historic win against India. In 2011, he was the protagonist for the win against Windies, a team that would become World Champions only a few months later.

However, a career spanning 15 years can hardly be lauded for a few good innings here and there. The call he made today should have come long ago, as he seemed a burden to the team many times.

All we can do is wish him good luck for the other two formats where he has cricket left in him. For T20s, thank you for calling it a day, finally!

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