Muttiah Muralitharan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Harbhajan Singh, Ravindra Jadeja, Yasir Shah. The list reads like spin-bowling royalty, yet they all share one glaring void in their glittering resumes: none of them ever managed to claim a five-wicket haul in a Test match in Australia.
On Sunday in Darwin, Mehidy Hasan Miraz achieved it on his very first attempt.
Make no mistake, Miraz has not suddenly eclipsed Muralitharan or Ashwin in stature. But what he delivered on the fourth day stands as one of the finest bowling performances by a visiting finger spinner in Australia.
Returning figures of 5/66 in the second innings, the 28-year-old registered the best figures by a visiting spinner in Australia in 20 years. He became the only visiting spinner since India’s Kuldeep Yadav in 2019 to claim a five-for Down Under, and the first since Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath in 2012 to do so in the third or fourth innings of a Test.
It was his 15th Test fifer, secured not through Mirpur-style skidding darts, but through relentless discipline and crease geometry. He out-thought the sweeping Alex Carey from around the wicket, creating a wide angle that drew the left-hander forward before heavy overspin gripped the pitch and straightened sharply to take the outside edge. Then, he bypassed the pitch entirely to deceive the towering Beau Webster, slipping in a lethal, Ashwin-esque undercut slider that held its line to bowl him through the gate.
Even as Cameron Green mounted a defiant rearguard with an unbeaten 104, Miraz maintained a suffocating economy under two runs an over, ensuring the door stayed shut.
“I just wanted to keep things simple,” Miraz reflected after the match.
“Lots of footmarks outside off and wanted to bowl in that area. I wanted to keep patience, not search for wickets every over. On these wickets, you have to keep discipline. We thought this was a great opportunity for us; if we beat them, it would be better for our country.”
Yet to focus solely on his bowling ignores the defining hallmark of Miraz’s career: he is Bangladesh’s ultimate crisis man.
In the first innings with the bat, arriving with the second new ball looming and the lead precarious, he produced a gritty, composed 65. By rotating the strike and guiding the tail, he extended Bangladesh’s total to 426, turning a modest lead into a psychologically crushing 228-run cushion.
His ability to deliver under pressure is a consistent pattern.
Since 2023, Miraz has accumulated 1,154 runs at an average of 35 alongside 78 wickets at 28. In 2024, his twin seventies, 77 and 78, and 10 wickets orchestrated Bangladesh’s historic series win in Rawalpindi. Later that year, he compiled a defiant 97 against South Africa in Mirpur when the top order collapsed. In 2025 against Zimbabwe, he followed a 10-wicket haul in one Test with a century in the next, inside seven days.
In Darwin, Miraz achieved the double of a fifty and a five-wicket haul in the same match for the fourth time in his career. Two of those have now come overseas, equalling Shakib Al Hasan’s national record. At just 28, he is already third on Bangladesh’s all-time Test wicket list and has breached the prestigious 2,000-run and 200-wicket landmark faster than most all-rounders in Test history.
What makes this achievement even more remarkable is the turbulence that preceded it. Recently stripped of his ODI captaincy and omitted from the T20I set-up, Miraz arrived in Australia with plenty of questions around him.
He answered them on the field.
In the toughest conditions, against one of the world’s best teams, Miraz produced when Bangladesh needed him most. Darwin was another reminder of what he has become: the man Bangladesh can turn to when the pressure is at its highest.
