Of the 150 players in this year’s World Cup, only one could mount a plausible claim to being both his country’s best batsman and best bowler. His name is Shakib Al-Hasan, the undisputed Most Valuable Player of the 2019 World Cup to date. There is a tendency to call Shakib underrated. This is curious, for Shakib is not underrated by players he’s played with or against, fans who have enjoyed his stellar international career and fine returns in the Indian Premier League, or the official ICC player rankings; in 2015, he became the only cricketer ever to top the allrounder ratings in all three formats at the same time. But the notion of Shakib as underrated speaks to a truth: because he is not from one of the sport’s traditional titans, some have found it easy to overlook his multifarious talents. Australia, indeed, have only played Bangladesh in a single ODI since 2011. In 2000, when Shakib was aged 13, two seminal events helped to transform Bangladesh’s cricket team. First, Bangladesh were awarded Test status: the culmination of a 29-year journey to this point, dating back to the Liberation War in 1971. Cricket always had strong roots in Bangladesh, which had…