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5 Bangladeshi players who could have played for India had the partition never happened

The best Bangladeshi batsman that could never be

The world of fantasy is a nice place to be in since there are no boundaries in it. All that we ever wanted, but don’t have, can be ours within the world of dreams. Everyone in this world fantasises something or the other.

A brand new car, a caring partner and a lot more things – some of which I would rather not say here. In my mind, however, there is always this one thought that keeps playing: how would the Indian cricket team look like if the partition never happened?

While it would be an amalgamation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, I always wonder what a team with India and Bangladeshi players would look like.

Some years ago, not many Bangladeshi players would have gotten into the Indian national cricket team. However, since the Tigers have been rising steadily, here are the 5 Bangladeshi players that could have a place in the Indian team had the division never happened…


#5 Mohammad Ashraful

We will start off with the most controversial choice in this list. Mohammad Ashraful is now a name drowning in the ocean of obscurity. After being convicted of match-fixing, the former Bangladesh captain has been banned from playing international cricket till 2018.

Since his ban in 2013, Bangladesh have meteorically risen through the ranks and it seems unlikely that Ashraful can make a comeback ever again. However, before all of this, he was a star in the making – the kind of batsman that could single-handedly influence the outcome of a match.

No-one – I repeat, no-one – played the over-the-keeper’s head pull shot better than him. There was so much raw talent in him that with the right grooming, he would have been one of the best batsmen in the game.

Unfortunately for both him and the team, during the time of his rise, the team didn’t really groom the temperament of the players like they do now and he turned out to be just like most kids with talent: taking the gift for granted.

Had he been a part of a unified India, he would have learned to keep his head down from the seniors of the Indian team back then – Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and the likes – and work as hard as possible, which would have made him realise his potential.

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