Bilal Khan

After a brief first-class career with Peshawar in Pakistan's domestic cricket in the late 2000s, left-arm swing bowler Bilal Khan turned into the leader of Oman's bowling attack and one of the most successful pace bowlers on the Associate scene in the late 2010s. As of 2022, his ODI bowling average was bettered only by Joel Garner, Rashid Khan and Sandeep Lamichhane among bowlers with at least 50 ODI wickets.

After playing the last of his six Pakistan domestic matches, Bilal took up a job offer in Muscat and began the ICC's four-year qualification process before making his Oman debut late in 2015. The ICC's guidelines at the time said only two players could be in the starting XI who were four-year residents but not yet seven-year residents of an adopted country, and so Bilal struggled to crack the regular Oman starting line-up over the course of 2016, but a breakout performance at the Desert T20 tournament in the UAE in January 2017 turned things around. From then on, he was a catalyst for Oman's rise from Division Five of the World Cricket League all the way up to achieving ODI status in 2019.

Bilal's pace is a couple of notches under express but his sharp inswing can be a handful for Associate batters not used to such skill at those speeds with the new ball. Far more deadly are his spells bowling at the death, which feature a devastating reverse-swinging yorker. Hong Kong found out the hard way in an elimination match at the 2019 T20 World Cup Qualifier in Dubai in a spell that helped Oman clinch a return trip to the T20 World Cup.

Bilal played all 35 matches for Oman in the 2019-2023 ICC Cricket World Cup League Two ODI tournament for Associates and finished as far and away their leading bowler, with 76 wicket-taker including three five-wicket hauls. In a tournament format structured with ODIs often played on back-to-back days, it was a remarkable feat not just of dominance but durability.