Akram Khan, the hard hitting middle order batsman returns in One Day International Cricket for Bangladesh in the 2003 World Cup. He will be facing the second ranking team in the world - South Africa in one day cricket, one of the hosts of the tournament.

His one day batting records so far is 857 runs in 38 one day matches at an average of 23.80. He will be appearing in the international cricket at the special request of present Bangladesh captain cum wicket keeper Khaled Mashud. His last appearance in international matches for Bangladesh was in July 2002 against Sri Lanka in the 1st test match in Sri Lanka. Where he scored only 20 runs off 78 balls in the 1st innings and 5 runs off 23 balls in the 2nd innings. It was actually a comeback match for him after he performed reputedly for Bangladesh 'A' team in the Busta Cup, the West Indian domestic tournament in the 2001-2002 season. Earlier, he was dropped
from the Bangladesh squad that toured Zimbabwe in the year 2001. His last one day international appearance was also against Zimbabwe in that tour, where he scored 35 runs off 108 balls in the first ODI, only 1 run off 8 balls in the second ODI and a struggling 25 runs off 43 balls in the last ODI, in which match other players were scoring at a much better rate than usual.

The gap between domestic level and international level for any Bangladeshi player is huge. A batsman just cannot come in and score big runs against a side like South Africa or even against New Zealand just like that. What Akram Khan must do is if given a chance, he should try to stay at the wicket as long as possible. But that is a very difficult task. Also the last time that Akram Khan went to South Africa, Bangladesh were all out for 51 and 57 against county sides of South Africa. Akram Khan's major contribution in that tour of Bangladesh was an unbeaten 10 runs facing 60 balls.

Whether including him in the current world cup squad is a good or a bad decision that remains to be seen. But with all the negative results that Bangladesh is pulling off starting with losing to Canada, the Bangladesh captain Khaled Mashud has got all the help that he asked for. It was the Bangladesh Cricket Board's policy to exclude both him and the two other former captains of Bangladesh Aminul Islam and Naimur Rahman. At least now the omen is on Khaled Mashud and his team to show on the field that their batting has improved with the help of Akram Khan.

In short, the good thing about including him in the squad as a replacement for injured pace bowler Mashrafee Bin Murtoza is that our batsman are really not performing upto their potential, they are impatient, technically they are more fragile. And inexperience of playing in big matches has added to all of those negativities. Even though captain Khaled Mashud denied that Akram Khan's experience was not in his mind when he was thinking of Akram Khan to replace Mashrafee, but it is his presence on the field that could boost up the performance of the Bangladesh team battingwise. And the bad thing about the whole issue is that if our batsman cannot perform now,
though they are young, then they will never be able to perform at the big stage, ever.

So from that point of view, it is important now for the younger batsman to contribute to the Bangladesh total to a larger extent than the senior batsman. And personally I would like to see the younger batsman contributing more than the senior players in a Bangladesh total.

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