Born in Pakistan, a techie, meet Sikandar Raza who shattered Rohit’s T20I record

Zimbabwe performed brilliantly in the T20 Internationals and scored a massive 344 runs against Gambia in the T20 World Cup Africa Qualifiers. With this performance, Zimbabwe broke 7 records, 2 of which were Indian records. In this win, Sikandar Raza broke records by scoring a blistering century and credited his team with their biggest ever win.

Zimbabwe scored big

Thanks to Sikandar Raza’s blistering century, Zimbabwe scored 344 runs in 20 overs, the highest score in T20 International cricket. With this record, he broke Nepal’s record of 314 runs against Mongolia last year. If we talk about full member teams, this record was held by India who scored 297 runs against Bangladesh in the last T20 series.

Sikandar Raza’s historic innings

Sikandar Raza scored the fastest century in a T20 International for a Test playing team. He scored 133 runs in just 43 balls including 7 fours and 15 sixes. He scored runs at a strike rate of 309 and scored a century in 35 balls, which saved the records held by India’s Rohit Sharma and South Africa’s David Miller. However, the record for fastest century in T20 overall (including non-Test playing teams) is still held by Sahil Chauhan who scored a century in 27 balls (Estonia vs Cyprus).

Learn about Sikandar Raja’s journey

Pakistan-born Sikandar Raza’s cricketing journey is also quite interesting. He was born on April 24, 1986 in Sialkot, Pakistan, which is known for manufacturing the best cricket bats in the world. He hails from a Punjabi-speaking Kashmiri family and studied at Air Force Public School in Pakistan. His dream was to become a pilot, but he failed his vision test and this dream was not fulfilled.

After this he graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University with a degree in Software Engineering. But his passion for cricket kept him connected to the game. In 2006, he scored centuries in 3 T20 matches and that’s when he really realized his cricketing skills. After this, in 2007 he decided to become a professional cricketer and was included in the potential squad for the 2011 World Cup. However, he was not selected in the final 15.