Shocking! Rashid Khan takes break from cricket due to....

The 25-year-old star Afghanistan National Cricket Team all-rounder Rashid Khan has decided to take a lengthy break from Test cricket and will not be seen representing his nation in the purest format of cricket anytime soon.

Rashid Khan is unarguably the greatest-ever cricketer to emerge from Afghanistan and he has taken the world cricket by storm since starting his career in 2015.

The leg-spinner has kept evolving throughout the years, and still, the batters find it extremely difficult to face him. Also, Rashid has improved his batting a lot and is now seen as a proper all-rounder, especially in T20 cricket.

Rashid has had enormous success in white-ball cricket for Afghanistan, as he has played 103 ODIs and 93 T20Is, bagging 183 and 152 wickets, respectively. However, he has not played many Test matches as Afghanistan are not allotted a lot of red-ball games.

So far, the Afghans have played just 9 Test matches in international cricket and Rashid has been part of 5 of them. The 25-year-old has bowled 1534 deliveries and while conceding 760 runs, he has bagged 34 Test wickets at an average of 22.35, an economy of 2.97, and a strike rate of 45.1.

He was last seen in action in Test cricket in March 2021. In the match against Zimbabwe, he bagged 4 wickets in the first innings for 138 runs and in the second innings, he bagged 7 wickets for 137 runs at Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi.

Since then, he has been out of action in the format and had an opportunity to feature in red-ball cricket against the New Zealand National Cricket Team in September as the Afghans and the Kiwis will take on each other in a one-off Test match from September 9 at the Greater Noida Sports Complex. However, Rashid Khan will miss the fixture.

The lower back injury has been troubling him for a while now - Rashid Khan takes a 1-year break from Test cricket

On Thursday, August 29, an Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) official confirmed that the star leg-spinner has faced a lot of troubles due to his lower back injury, which has prompted him to make a major decision to take a break from Test cricket for one year.

"The lower back injury has been troubling him for a while now. He has decided to take a break from Test cricket for one year,” an Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) official told The Indian Express.

Rashid Khan was not picked by the Afghanistan Cricket Board in the preliminary 20-member squad to face New Zealand in a one-off Test due to the back injury he picked while playing for Speen Ghar Tigers (SGT) in the Shpageeza Cricket League (SCL), which is Afghanistan's domestic T20 tournament, last month, reported ESPNCricinfo.

Back injuries are nothing new, for Rashid Khan, as had underwent surgery for the same in October-November last year after the ODI World Cup 2023. He also recently suffered a hamstring injury in The Hundred.

Meanwhile, Rashid Khan-less Afghanistan National Cricket Team players reached Greater Noida on Wednesday and are set to undergo a one-week preparatory camp ahead of the match against New Zealand.