tabraiz shamsi

Award-winning South African cricketer Tabraiz Shamsi enjoyed one of the best years of his career to date in 2021. After his impressive performance in that year’s T20i tournament, he topped the competition’s ICC bowling rankings for the first time, was named in their T20i Team of the Year, and named Men’s T20i Cricketer of the Year by Cricket South Africa. His most recent domestic matches have been for the Titans, a team he first played for back in 2014.

Shamsi hails from Johannesburg and was born there in February 1990. He began showing his cricketing potential in school, first as a seam bowler but soon switching to spin bowling on the advice of his coaches. He began to establish himself in professional cricket throughout the first half of the 2010s, representing Gauteng, the Highveld Lions, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Dolphins. He briefly left his homeland in 2015 to play for St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in the Caribbean Premier League, becoming their leading wicket-taker in the process.

The following year, Shamsi was picked for a senior South African international squad for the first time and made his ODI and Test debuts within months of each other, taking his maiden Test wicket in his first match. Since then, he has become a mainstay of the Proteas, becoming their first-choice spin bowler and posting increasingly accomplished tallies. As his successful 2021 season proved, he is in the form of his career.