Players 2016

When the annals of Bangladesh cricket are sifted by future generations, Shakib Al Hasan will emerge and re-emerge as the greatest cricketer of its first two decades. His on-field performances and off-field professionalism set a benchmark that was followed by peers and juniors alike. As a bowler, Shakib is accurate, consistent and canny; aggression and a wide range of strokes are the keys to his batting. Even more importantly, he has self-belief an excellent temperament, unflustered by the big occasion and ready to do battle against the top teams.

The best of his ability and temperament were on display in his first Test as captain, against a weakened West Indies side in Grenada, when Shakib took eight wickets and scored an unbeaten 96 in a tense but successful fourth-innings chase of 215, leading Bangladesh to their first overseas series victory. In only his fourth Test as captain, Shakib scored 87 and 100 - his maiden Test century - in a losing cause against New Zealand in Hamilton, performances that offered further proof of his skill and ability to handle pressure. Read more

Nasir Hossain is one of the young allrounders in Bangladesh who, if handled correctly, could be a long-term prospect for the national team in all forms. As a lower-middle-order batsman, Nasir can bat in different gears depending on the match situation; as an offspinner he has control and accuracy; and his fielding is perhaps the most exciting part of his game. His potential was seen in his first international game, when he scored 63 against Zimbabwe, the highest by a Bangladeshi on ODI debut. That performance led to his Test debut against West Indies in October 2011, a month before his 20th birthday.

That he had a feel for sports was obvious pretty early in Nasir's life: he joined Bangladesh's only sports institute, BKSP, in 2004 as a 13-year-old. In a few years, Nasir quickly became an important member of the institute's league team and played a key role in its promotion to the Premier League. Read more

Mosaddek Hossain, who comes from a family of cricketers, snuck up on Bangladesh cricket's consciousness during the 2013 Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League, helping Abahani Limited stay afloat in a disastrous campaign. He struck a century and three fifties, before having to head to the Bangladesh Under-19 training camp ahead of the 2014 World Cup in the UAE. The opportunity to get out of age-group cricket quite early proved to be an important milestone in his development.

His first-class debut in the 2013-14 season wasn't memorable: he got a pair against Khulna in Cox's Bazar. But in the following season, he struck 250 and 282, his first two hundred-plus scores in first-class cricket. He added another double-hundred in 2015. A Twenty20 International debut followed in January 2016, but it was a forgettable one against Zimbabwe. By then it was clear that he wouldn't be in coach Chandika Hathurusingha's 2016 World T20 plans. Read more

A promising medium-pace bowler who was discovered at 17, Alauddin Babu's most conspicuous cricketing act so far has been to concede the most expensive List A over of all time, when he gave away 39 in a Dhaka Premier League match.

He first earned attention in 2008, when he took an eight-wicket haul in Dhaka's First Division League, which is the level just below the Premier League. He was immediately fast-tracked to the Bangladesh Under-19 team the same year, and he played in the 2010 Youth World Cup in New Zealand.

Earmarked as a future prospect, and consequently selected for the National Cricket Academy in 2010, he made his first-class debut for Rajshahi Division, and then moved to Rangpur when the region became a divisional cricket team the following year.

Seam-bowling allrounders are rare in Bangladesh, which is an advantage to Alauddin, who is also known as a big-hitting lower-order batsman. Read more

Mohammad Shahid is one of several medium-pacers whose steady growth in Bangladesh's domestic cricket was rewarded by an international call-up within a few years. Shahid bowls off a long run-up, generating speeds up to 135kmph with a strong rock-back action.

Born in Narayanganj next to the Shitalakhya River, Shahid picked up his cricket in his teens before steadily going up the Dhaka league system with his sturdy pace bowling. He came into attention through some performances in the Dhaka Premier League and made his first-class debut in the 2011-12 season when he took 15 wickets at a bowling average of 26.06 in five matches.

The following season didn't go too well as he took just five wickets in five games but it got better in the next two seasons 2013-14 and 2014-15, when he took 18 wickets each. The second lot of 18 wickets was in addition to the 21 List A wickets he took for Legends of Rupganj in the DPL. Read more

Suhrawadi Shuvo is a slow left-arm orthodox bowler, like his favourite bowler Daniel Vettori, who began playing cricket in 1999 and impressed for Rajshahi Division when he made his first-class debut in 2004-05. He was part of Bangladesh's Under-19 World Cup squad in 2006 and took nine wickets in six matches in Sri Lanka at an average of only 14.44. He went on to lead Bangladesh's U-19 World Cup campaign in 2008, and was handed his ODI debut in the second match against England at Mirpur in February 2010. 
Cricinfo staff February 2010

As soon as he broke into the side at the age of 22, while a law student, it was apparent that Kumar Sangakkara was destined for more than just batting stardom. The left-handers that had preceded him, like Arjuna Ranatunga and Asanka Gurusinha, had been pugnacious battlers but Sangakkara was cut from more graceful cloth, easing into strokes with the elegance often associated withthose that play with the 'other' hand. The cut and the pull came naturally to him and with growing confidence, he became a more assured front-foot player as well.

Ranatunga had already exploded the myth of the Sri Lankans being meek men who could be bullied, but Sangakkara has refined the belligerence, combining a suave exterior with cutting asides and sharp sledges from behind the stumps. Initially, his glovework wasn't for the purists, but such was his batting ability that there was no question of displacing him from the XI. Read more

A prolific, elegant and utterly classy batsman with a huge appetite for runs, and a calm yet authoritative captain - those are the qualities that best describe Mahela Jayawardene. His sheer quality as a batsman was never in doubt even when he just entered the international scene, but for Jayawardene the biggest challenge has been to justify all the early hype. With over 10,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs - and a captaincy stint that included a World Cup final appearance - it can safely be said that he has met that challenge more than adequately.

Blessed with excellent hand-eye coordination and a fine technique, Jayawardene scores his runs all around the wicket. Among his favourite strokes are the languid cover-drive - often with minimal footwork but precise placement and timing - and the wristy flick off his legs, but there are several others he plays with equal felicity. The most memorable are the cuts and dabs he plays behind the stumps, mostly off spinners, but also against quick bowling, when bat makes contact with ball delightfully late. Read more

By the time Andre Russell was little more than five years into international cricket, he was a two-time world champion. That both titles came in the T20 format defines the kind of cricketer he is. A batsman who hits the ball hard enough to make the inanimate thing scream for mercy, he functions primarily as a finisher. He generates even more pace with the ball in hand and when it is anywhere near him in the field, it doesn't matter at what pace it's travelling. Russell will probably get to it. He is less a cricketer, in the traditional sense, than an athlete. An allrounder from Jamaica, Russell made his first-class debut at the age of 19. He made his way into the West Indies A squad and captured plenty of attention with his exploits in a 50-over game against Ireland in June 2010, smashing 61 off 34 balls and taking 6 for 42. It was a performance that helped him win a place in West Indies' 2011 World Cup squad. Read more

Dwayne Bravo is that creature long needed by West Indies, an allrounder with plenty of flair and skill both as a batsman and seam bowler. Unfortunately for West Indies, they haven't been able to utilise his services as often as they probably would have liked to: till the end of 2013, more than nine years since his Test debut, he had played only 40 out of West Indies' 81 Tests in the same period. Prioritising IPL over international cricket has led to differences with the board, while injuries have also limited his Test appearances, but as a limited-overs player Bravo remains a key member for West Indies and took over from Darren Sammy as ODI captain in 2013. He held the post till December 2014, when the selectors replaced him with Jason Holder and left him out of the ODI side, two months after he had played a central role in the team pulling out mid-way from a tour to India due to issues with the payment structure in their revised contracts. Read more

A talented, wristy strokeplayer, capable of opening the innings or batting in the middle order, Ravi Bopara has been a regular member of the England set-up for several years without ever making himself indispensable. He made his first international half-century in his fourth innings, at the 2007 World Cup, but suffered a disastrous debut Test series in Sri Lanka later that year. Three consecutive hundreds against West Indies in early 2009 rebalanced his ledger, only for a difficult Ashes experience to again cost him his place, and he remained on the fringes of the Test side. His form in limited-overs cricket, where his medium-pace bowling is also a useful option, has been more consistent, with a series of increasingly mature displays under the ODI captaincy of his Essex team-mate Alastair Cook.

In 2002, aged 17, Bopara earned a professional contract with Essex and immediately established himself as a name for the future. Read more

Irfan Sukkur (born 22 May 1993) is a Bangladeshi First class and List A cricket player. He was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Mehedi Maruf is an opening batsman with plenty of experience at U19 level, having played in eleven matches for the U19 team, however he is yet to play in a first-class fixture. His highest score is only 36, and in the recent tri-nations U19 ODI tournament featuring England and Sri Lanka in Bangladesh, he started the first 3 matches, but was then dropped, featuring in only 2 of the remaining matches. He must find his form with the bat to ensure that he is not just a squad player by the time Bangladesh arrives in Sri Lanka for the U19 World Cup.
Chris Oliver January 2006

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"I hit a lot of sixes, big sixes like him," Evin Lewis said when asked why he chose Chris Gayle as his mentor. For an upcoming left-handed opening batsman, especially in the modern game, that's a fairly smart pick.

Lewis moved up the ranks playing age-group cricket for Trinidad & Tobago, and was part of a championship winning Under-19 side in 2008. His List A debut came in October 2009, when he struck a half-century playing for West Indies U-19s. The following January he was representing them at the World Cup.

Like Gayle, Lewis' best has come in the T20 circuit. In 2013, he was Trinidad & Tobago's top-scorer in the Champions League with a strike-rate of 141.61. He showed big-match credentials, striking 62 off 46 balls in the semi-final against a Mumbai Indians attack comprising Mitchell Johnson and Harbhajan Singh. The following year, at the Caribbean Premier League, he made 321 runs from eight innings, the most by a T&T Red Steel batsman and only 42 behind Gayle, who had played 11 innings. Read more

Seekkuge Prasanna worked his way up through the ranks by bowling legbreaks and broke into the Sri Lanka Army team in 2006 as a 21-year-old. He made an immediate impact, taking 3 for 23 in 10 overs on his domestic one-day debut against Lankan Cricket Club. He built an outstanding List A record over the next five years, picking up 73 wickets at 18.38 in 45 matches. He was selected in the Sri Lanka A team that toured England in 2011 and took a six-wicket haul while opening the bowling against England Lions. The Sri Lankan selectors immediately took note, asked him to fly back home for the final two ODIs against the touring Australians, and immediately gave him an international debut.

An aggressive left-hander, who bowls with as much venom as he bats, Wayne Parnell was earmarked for success early and spent the next few years trying to get there. Inconsistency and injury have been his nemeses, however.

Parnell was schooled at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth, the alma mater of Graeme and Peter Pollock, and began playing provincially when he was 12. He played at Under-13, Under-15 and Under-19 levels, and made his first-class debut for Eastern Province in 2006-07.

He was part of South Africa's Under-19 squad for the 2006 World Cup in Sri Lanka and captained them in the 2008 edition in Malaysia. Parnell led by example, taking 18 wickets - the most in the tournament - and scored useful runs in the middle-order to steer South Africa to the final.

Thereafter, he went on the Emerging Players tour of Australia before earning a call-up to the senior one-day squad for a series in early 2009. Read more

Usama Mir (born 23 December 1995) is a Pakistani cricketer who has played for Khan Research Laboratories since the 2013 season, and also for the Sialkot Stallions Twenty20 franchise. A leg spinner, he was the leading wickettaker during the 2015 edition of the Haier Super 8 T20 Cup.

Tanveer Haider Khan (born 5 December 1991) is a Bangladeshi cricketer. He made his first senior appearances in 2010, playing in two first-class matches for Sylhet Division. He later made his List A debut for the Bangladesh Cricket Board XI, playing against the touring  England XI.