Gulbadin Naib is an Afghan cricketer, who plays for the national cricket team of Afghanistan since 2011. He is a right-arm fast bowler and occasionally bats as a right-handed middle-order batsman. Gulbadin represents Afghan Cheetahs in Twenty20 cricket and Boost Defenders in first-class cricket at domestic level. In April 2019, he elected as the new captain of Afghanistan team in ODI format for the running ICC Cricket World Cup.

Naib began his domestic cricket career professionally from 2008 and played a few regional as well as List-A matches during this time. He had to wait for 3-year more to enter the national team of the country after his domestic debut and made it in 2011 through an ODI match. Unfortunately, Naib couldn’t have a smooth path at the beginning of his international career and failed to impress the selector with the perfect consistency. As a result, he had excluded from the final team of Afghanistan in 2015 Cricket World Cup.

According to the cricket experts, Naib failed to improve his batting skills along with his medium pace expertise with the perfect balance. After being unselected in that World Cup tournament, Naib handled his determination in the right direction and back with a bang in 2016 into the national team again.

This time, he pulled himself up as a middle-order batsman from the lower-order rank and developed his bowling expertise more brilliantly. He has been a regular member of Afghanistan cricket team since then, especially in the ODI format. Apart from international matches, Naib also plays in APL and BPL franchises.

(as Compiled by Madhushree Das Ghosh)

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