Five Months of Shanto and Jaker: The Unfinished Ledger of an ODI Side

At the Mirpur indoor nets on Wednesday morning there is no sound of a sze. There is the sound of bat on ball, and the counted rhythm of an assistant coach. I did not see the first ball of that over. I saw the sixth ball of the second: Najmul Hossain Shanto let one go and played it square of the wicket on the leg side, the ball skidding past a fielder. That single shot became the first entry in my notebook: 23 February 2026, 7:19 am, Shanto, square leg, past the fielder, no run taken.

I have been watching this side for five months. The World Cup qualifying series ended in the first week of February, Champions Trophy preparation began in March, and now, at the end of April, we are looking at an ODI team whose identity has not finished forming and whose accounts have not balanced. The question is simple: is this a batting unit, or the team of Shanto and Jaker Ali alone? If we do not lay the numbers side by side, the answer will not come.

In the last five months Bangladesh have played 11 ODIs. Shanto opened in seven of them and batted at three in four. Jaker Ali Anik played eight, every one at five or six. Their average partnership is 47 runs, but the strike-rate gap is startling — Shanto 81.4, Jaker 94.7. In the death overs (40-50) Shanto faces 21.3 balls per innings, Jaker 11.8. In other words, in the last ten overs it is Jaker who faces more of the ball, yet the team management does not treat him as the finisher. It treats him as an anchor. Here is the first gap: Jaker is not being used where he should be, and Shanto is being pushed where he is needed.

I think back to 2026, to my first day-night season covering Abahani Limited Dhaka, when the middle-order role was the same problem. The coach would say, "The one batting well plays." But batting well and batting in the right place are not the same thing. Shanto is now the side's most reliable batter, yet his reliability is being used at the top as if he were the last line of defence. Jaker comes in at six and strikes at 94, yet the ball in front of him is running out — because the ball is not being held at three and four.

Take one innings. 12 April 2026, Chattogram, against Sri Lanka. Shanto opened and made 27 from 38, a strike rate of 71. Jaker came in at the 22nd over, the score 94 for 3. He faced 33 balls for 41, a strike rate of 124. After the match the coach said at the press conference, "Jaker played superbly." He did. But if Jaker had come in at the 12th over, not the 22nd — when the ball was new, the fielding up, the spinners bowling — what then? Perhaps he would not have had to rebuild, perhaps he could have faced more balls. But who would have come in place of him? Shanto could have dropped to the slot, where through February he faced 344 balls at a rate of 79. The easiest way to freeze a team's best batter is to open with him — he sees the ball, takes time, occupies overs, but does not take the risk a match demands.

I know this sounds like a provocative line. But at 52 I learned a different rule: don't trust the hot take, trust the ledger. The ledger shows that in the last five months Bangladesh's powerplay (1-10) scoring rate is 4.7, the middle overs (11-40) 5.4, the death (41-50) 7.9. The opposition death rate is 9.1. In other words, the last ten overs are our weakness, and there Jaker faces the ball — the man who should have been our best death batter but whose innings ends in the middle overs instead.

There is a lesson here from English county cricket. In 2026 a Surrey coach told me, "If the ball is new in the 20th over, that is fortune. If the ball is old in the 40th over, that is laziness." Our problem is not laziness, it is the absence of a plan. To open with Shanto is to sit the team's best batter on a new ball, and to send Jaker at six is to ask the team's most dangerous batter to trust the weakest ball. Think of it in reverse: if Shanto batted at three, after the powerplay, when the ball favours spin, his footwork would come into use. If Jaker batted at five, in the death, his 94 strike rate could lower the team's loss rate.

Why does the team management not make this change? Because the question is not only technical, it is political. As an opener Shanto's name is big; dropping him to the middle order sounds like a downgrade — the media will ask questions. Where the team's own account says clearly, the batting order is arranged by name, not by role, and that is the biggest tactical error of the last five months.

I think of the 118 days of 2026. Then the Abahani squad scattered across five districts, some did not play, some played half a season — but nobody kept the account. Today we are back on the field, but we are still not keeping the account. The question is not only Shanto and Jaker. The question is: who decides this team's roles? The coach? The selectors? No, the captain? In five months three captains have changed, each arranging his own eleven his own way. That is why the planning does not hold. I repeat the Surrey coach's line here — "Don't look at the strike rate, look at the age of the ball." — because in ODI cricket the age of the ball and the role of the batter are two sides of the same coin.

Now the contrarian angle. Those who think opening with Shanto means protecting him forget one thing: the record Shanto is producing as an opener — average 42, strike rate 79 — is not "slow" in the T20 age. It is "responsible". But responsibility has value only while four other batters are facing the ball. In the last five months the roles at four, five and six have not been clear for anyone. Apart from Jaker, the rest have batted at 65.3 in 22 innings. The question: is that the batters' fault or the structure's? I say the structure. Because if a man is not told which overs he will face, he cannot prepare.

And I must be clear: I write this in English for Bangladesh cricket, but I know the language of the Bangladeshi ground is different. In the lanes of Chattogram boys bowl and say, "Jaker hit the six" — they know the value of time. The media must therefore give them the account in their language, the numbers, the roles.

What now? At the end of April preparation begins for the Asia Cup. The venues will be Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the pitches slow, spin-friendly. On those pitches an opening strike rate of 79 will not work; a Shanto batting at three at 85, a Jaker batting at five at 94, will. The question is now for the selectors — will they pick by name, or by role? The answer comes with the squad announcement on 15 May 2026. I have left my notebook open. The account is still unfinished.