"Your inner child has come out," Monty Desai, former Rajasthan Royals coach and now head coach of Atlanta Fire told Shakib Al Hasan in the team huddle after Fire lifted their first-ever Minor League Cricket (MiLC) title earlier this month. It was a striking observation. Shakib is typically all business, fiercely competitive, and known for wearing a permanent game face. But in America, around his Atlanta Fire teammates, there were glimpses of a lighter Shakib, one far from his public image as Bangladesh's hard-edged cricketing superstar. "He's always laughing!" said Fire batsman Sagar Patel. "He's like a kid. It looked like he enjoyed playing with us.
He wasn't just playing for the sake of playing. He was playing because he loved the game. You could see that, always making jokes." Rarely would such words be used to describe the former Bangladesh captain and Member of Parliament, who now plies his trade in franchise leagues around the world while quietly navigating a self-imposed exile from Bangladesh in the political aftermath of the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government. Far from the noise, expectation, and constant scrutiny that once defined his daily existence in Bangladesh, Shakib has rediscovered something simple.
The pure, unbridled joy of just playing cricket again. "I really enjoyed it, to be honest. I got to know so many local players. I met a few that I played with earlier in my career. It took me back to my Under-19 days. It was good fun for me reliving the kind of cricketing atmosphere I found in my younger days. It was as if I relived those memories," Shakib told Cricbuzz in an exclusive chat. In America, there are no endless press scrums waiting outside hotel lobbies. No political narratives chasing him endlessly.
No frenzy of cameras documenting his every breath. Just bat, ball, and his team mates in the dressing room, the most pristine elements of the game. For a man who became a national obsession before he even turned 19, whose rise to superstardom was fast-tracked before he had the chance to grow into adulthood on his own terms, the MiLC, alongside a crew of motley Fire men, afforded him a return to the simple truth of his life. Playing the game for the love of it. But for all his superstardom, Shakib packed away that aura before he arrived in Atlanta. With Fire, he was just one of the boys. He checked into the same two-star hotel as everyone else, and ate the same one-course team meals at the ground. When asked later, he laughed and admitted he couldn't even remember the last time he had stayed in a two-star hotel.
Yet nothing about his behaviour hinted at entitlement. If anything, his grounded presence surprised everyone in the dressing room. Shakib shed the tag of "star player" not only off the field but on it as well. In franchise cricket, it's not uncommon to see aging superstars drift through lesser competitions. Fielding in comfort positions inside the ring to conserve energy. Shakib was the exact opposite. His work ethic was monastic. Despite being offered the luxury of fielding in the circle, he consistently chose high-pressure positions in the deep. Shakib's struggles with blurry vision in his right eye are well documented, and at 37, diminishing reflexes only make the challenge of hand-eye coordination tougher. He knew his role with the bat at Atlanta Fire was limited as he was being used sparingly to create more opportunities for the younger players in the top order. Yet that never altered his preparation. He spent close to 45 minutes in the nets before an important game, experimenting with different stances and head positions to cope with the blurry vision and improve his sighting of the ball.
The irony was hard to miss as across five matches, he faced barely 30 balls in total in the middle, yet he consistently batted more in the nets than he did in actual competition. He is expected to meet a specialist eye surgeon in Florida later in the month for further treatment. It's also typical for marquee players in smaller leagues to operate in their own bubble.
Doing private warm-ups, staying aloof from team drills, performing their own routines while giving off the air of hierarchy. Shakib never entertained that idea. He completed every team warm-up and cooldown like everyone else, and only then did he move aside to do his personal routines before or after. It was a small detail, but one that made the teammates believe he is one amongst them. "He had just arrived for his first game," recalled Fire teammate Sagar. "We were talking about his bat grip and he overheard us. Right away he said, 'You like this grip? Text me next week - I'll get it for you guys.' I mean, we had barely known him for two hours.
For him to offer something like that so naturally showed how affable he really is. And it wasn't just that. He always made it a point to hang around with us at the hotel. He had meals with us when he could've easily just ordered room service. That was special." There is a long list of mercurial moments attached to Shakib. Public altercations, the infamous moment he kicked the stumps in anger, and even one incident where he charged at an umpire with a bat. But that wasn't the Shakib his teammates met in Atlanta. "If I'm being honest, you wouldn't hear a word out of place from him, let alone raising the decibel levels in the few weeks we have been together," said Sunny Patel, former Gujarat Ranji cricketer and Shakib's teammate at Atlanta Fire. "It was quite surprising to us as we all have seen those viral reels. But he turned out to be totally different from what we thought he would be" In Bangladesh, there has long been a perception that money sits at the center of everything Shakib does. One online portal even mockingly nicknamed him "Showroom al Hasan," a jibe at the countless store and brand inaugurations he was invited to attend. Truth be told, Shakib was Bangladesh's first true commercial superstar.
A player who not only dominated on the field but monetised sporting success like no one before him in his country. His rise mirrored Bangladesh's own economic ascent. As the country grew, so did Shakib's brand power. He became and remains the darling of advertisers.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp ChannelBut the Shakib his Atlanta Fire teammates experienced in the United States was far removed from that stereotype. He chose to play the final five matches of the Minor League Cricket (MiLC) season for a fraction of what he earns in the CPL, even though this stint was squeezed tightly between his CPL and Canada 60 commitments.
MiLC is a semi-professional competition, and his earnings reflected that, but Shakib honored a long-standing promise to the Fire owner Hasan Tarek, a fellow Bangladeshi. At a time when athletes around the world monetise every minute of their availability, Shakib chose to remain uncalculating of his time. After every game, academy kids and young players from opposition teams would crowd around him for photos, questions, and autographs. Shakib never once brushed them off.
He spoke to them before even freshening up, often still in his match gear, and would keep conversations going between bites of his post-match meal. There was no body language of "celebrity distance". "I personally think those are made-up stories by some of the journalists, online news portals which made people think like that, because no one else have done what I have done in Bangladesh. It was something new for them. It was difficult for them to digest.
If someone else (brand endorsements) does it now, that doesn't affect them as much as it did with me, because I was the first one, and that's the good thing and the bad thing as well" said Shakib when quizzed about that perception. "But having said that, people can have their own perception, and I'm not worried about it, or I don't mind what they think because I am interested in what people close to me think.
But I don't think any of them think like that" said Shakib when quizzed about that perception. That lingering perception among a section of Bangladeshi fans that Shakib is driven by money and by extension lives in his own insulated bubble resurfaced during the anti-Hasina protests of 2024.
As tensions escalated in Bangladesh, Shakib's neutrality became a talking point. He became a target of intense criticism for his decision not to take a political position. Depending on which side of the political divide one occupied, to some he was rightly chastised for staying silent, while to others he was unfairly berated in a social media trial, where extreme voices went as far as calling him an "enemy of the people." That public hostility spilled to the diaspora too.
During a GT20 Canada match in 2024, a group of Bangladeshi spectators heckled him, hurling accusations and insults. Shakib, never one to back down from confrontation, briefly engaged with one of them. A moment that went viral and further amplified the dogma of he had somehow lost touch with the people who once adored him. Critics argued that his reluctance to take a political stand would tarnish his legacy, that his time in the cold had begun. But reality, as it often does with Shakib, proved more layered over time. At the FOBANA (Federation of Bangladeshi Associations of North America) convention in Atlanta earlier this year, a different story unfolded.
The event ran out of Shakib-signed jerseys and hats within no time as hundreds of Bangladeshi expatriates lined up for the Shakib merchandise. What happened at the FOBANA event was a powerful ode to a parallel reality that exists too. A reminder that while there are people who carry a persistent resentment toward Shakib, there are just as many who refuse to let him be defined by one moment of silence or distorted by agenda-driven narratives. Those who believe two decades of sweat, blood and service to Bangladesh cannot be erased by social media noise or political witchhunts. "I think that was just one moment that went against me. Maybe because they were expecting something else, and I was not in a position to do it, or I wasn't aware of the situation, to be honest.
So, it was very difficult for me because I was far from home at that time. And that's the only time I think they went against me, and which I understand from their point of view, and I respect it as well. But I don't have any regret for that, but I think people are starting to understand it more and more now" said Shakib. If the diaspora response at FOBANA was any indication, the reality on the ground in Bangladesh may already be shifting. Narratives evolve with time, and it may not be long before a sense of perspective kicks in amongst the masses in Bangladesh. It has, after all, been more than 18 months since their hero has last set foot in Bangladesh.
Shakib has made it clear to Cricbuzz he has not retired from any format for Bangladesh. "No, to be honest, I am not retired from any format officially," he said, putting to rest the contrary reports of him being retired from certain formats. He has expressed a quiet wish to hang up those massive boots one final time at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka. "Yes, 100%. I think it's more for them than it's for me," he admitted. "If that happens, that's the best thing that can happen to my fans and to me." Shakib may have softened with time, but he hasn't lost the steel in his spine. He still lives by his own principles and doesn't bend to please people in power. In a world full of psychopaths, Shakib remains stubbornly with his individuality.
That was evident when, despite the current political toxicity in Bangladesh, in what was eventually perceived as an act of defiance he posted a picture wishing Hasina on her birthday at a time when her name had been virtually blacklisted in public discourse. He didn't fear backlash though. Neither when he was the toast of the nation, and neither does he fear it now in his self-imposed exile.
The backlash came swiftly though. Bangladesh sports advisor publicly declared he would do everything in his power to prevent Shakib from playing for Bangladesh again, branding him an accomplice to tyranny. The irony here is unmistakable. If sanity prevails and if he is allowed to walk into the sunset with grace, it will be a farewell that stands to be more than just a ceremonial send-off. A chance for the country to reconcile with its greatest son of the 21st century. And perhaps, a unifying moment for all of Bangladesh that cuts through the political divide.