Anamul bears the brunt of erratic selection policy

Anamul Haque, the player who broke a 31-year-old world record by scoring 1138 runs in the previous season of the Dhaka Premier League, the highest number of runs in a List-A 50-over tournament, was not picked for Bangladesh’s first One-Day International (ODI) against West Indies on Tuesday.

What makes Anamul’s exclusion even more farcical is the fact that in the Test and Twenty20 International series that was held prior, the right-hander was picked to play.

The batsman who was in red hot form in white-ball cricket was called back into the Test team after over seven years in place of an injured Yasir Ali and was left to fend for himself in front of a potent Caribbean pace attack in red-ball cricket.

The result, unsurprisingly, was poor as Anamul ended up at the wrong end of two 50-50 LBW calls in the Saint Lucia Test.

After the Test series, the colour of the ball changed from red to white as the three-match T20 series commenced. Anamul was included in the playing XI for the T20 matches. He doesn’t have a sparkling record in T20s, but maybe the think tank thought his 50-over form would bleed over to the other white-ball format.

But Anamul failed to make his mark again, scoring 29 runs in three games.

After disappointments in the Test and T20I series, the tourists were keen to bounce back in the tour with a return to their strongest format, ODIs.

In the absence of Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim and Yasir Ali, who had heavily contributed to the Tiger’s ODI series win earlier in the year against South Africa, Bangladesh was a bit short on the batting front.

This was the ideal situation to include Anamul in the mix and give him a chance to replicate what he has done in the 50-over format back in Bangladesh.

But that’s not what happened. Instead of Anamul, the team management decided to pick Najmul Hossain Shanto in the top order.

Before the 1st ODI against West Indies, Shanto averaged less than 12 in ODIs and hadn’t played a 50-over match for Bangladesh for 1.5 years. Shanto hasn’t done anything worthy of note in the 50-over format in a while and his position in Bangladesh’s Test team is also hanging by a string.

Still, the management picked Shanto over Anamul. Captain Tamim Iqbal tried to justify this decision by saying that Shanto has been with the ODI side for the last few series without playing a game, so he deserved to get picked for this match.

According to that logic, Shanto warming the bench in the last three ODI series has more significance than Anamul’s world record-breaking run in the previous domestic season.

Tamim’s logic didn’t hold up to many, one of them was former Bangladesh cricketer and current commentator Athar Ali Khan, who took to Facebook to declare his shock at Anamul’s exclusion.

“Absolutely fine with Nasum Ahmed making ODI debut but cannot understand why Anamul Haque Bijoy who made history in list A by scoring 1138 runs last season (which is also the highest ever) not getting picked today. Mind boggling!” Athar posted on Facebook on 10 July.

Bangladesh did end up winning the match by six wickets, and Shanto played a part in the victory with a 37-run innings.

But Anamul’s omission sets a bad precedence. It sends out a message to the players toiling away at the domestic level that even breaking a world record could end up being insufficient if the think tank isn’t convinced by their ability.

It shows them that it doesn’t matter which format they play well in, the management could very well ask them to play in some other format. Furthermore, if a player fails to deliver in those formats, that could result in them getting dropped from the XI and not even getting a chance in the format they excelled in.

In cricket, as the colour of the ball changes, so does the way the game is played. The white, red and pink coloured balls have their own sets of challenges. Those making the strategies in the national team’s dressing room are well aware of it. But in Anamul’s case, all of them have seemingly turned colour blind.

Shanto getting picked over Anamul once again proves that the national team coaches don’t really take the performances in the country’s domestic scene into account. They base their team selection on what they see during training sessions and have a set list of players who they think are good enough to play for the national team.

Success at the domestic level can never guarantee triumph on the international stage. But the whole point of having a domestic scene is to see who can go one level higher and represent the country. If a domestic system can’t be relied upon to do that successfully, then what’s the point of having it in the first place?