Salahuddin backs Shanto to make an impact at Asian Games

Bangladesh men's team head coach Mohammad Salahuddin backed Najmul Hossain Shanto to succeed in the shorter format at the upcoming Asian Games cricket event in Japan.

After missing more than a year due to a poor run of form, the former T20 skipper, who last played in a T20I in May 2025 against the UAE in Sharjah, is back in the team.

Najmul is capable of demonstrating his worth in the shorter format, insisted Salahuddin.

“Look, the top 15 players in Bangladesh will play. Who entered and who left isn't really the big deal. The question is whether our 15 best players are playing. Everyone seems to agree that Shanto (Najmul) is one of the top 15. Therefore, he has been chosen,” Salahuddin stated.

I'll say that Shanto is not a new T20 player. Additionally, he performed well the last time he played T20. In the BPL, he has a lot of centuries. A lot of centuries. "I think he'll be able to get used to this format easily," Salauddin said in the end.

Salahuddin went on to say that they had originally intended to send members of the High Performance Unit to the Asian Games, but that they changed their minds after their rivals named strong teams. "Now, what I will say is that we were originally supposed to go with the HP team. But why don't we send our entire national teams there when we see that other nations are doing the same? So we think it will be a challenging series and in the group we have, I think we have a very easy option to go to the final if we play well,” said Salahuddin adding that adjusting to the shorter format will be key for their success.

But we haven't played T20s in the last few series. The primary obstacle lies in our ability to quickly adjust to it and restore the T20s rhythm to that which existed three to four years ago. We haven't played T20s in a few months because we were playing Tests and ODIs,” he said.

Salahuddin went on to say that since they will be playing ahead of the women's team, they will want to learn about the conditions in Japan from them. “Because the girls will play first, we may get a lot of information from them about how the wicket and field will be. This is an advantage. Because the girls will play first, the boys will play after the girls' game is over. Before that, we might get a lot of information,” he said.

As one of four seeded teams vying for a direct path to the quarterfinals, Bangladesh's Asian Games campaign begins on September 29 in the quarterfinal stage alongside India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.