10 greatest Bangladeshi cricketers of all time

#8. Mohammad Ashraful

On a quiet afternoon in Dhaka in 2007, players, spectators, officials and the media personals waited nonchalantly for the formalities to get over. The defeat looked certain for the home team who while following on had slipped to ten for three down while being more than 400 runs behind India.

Then walked to the crease Mohammad Ashraful. With nothing to lose, he started throwing his bat at everything. There was innovation, power, and smartness. His initial boundaries went unnoticed but as the audacity of his batting and the frequency of his boundaries increased, everyone at the ground was forced to take note of this little cameo.

It ended as surprisingly as it had started. It lasted for less than an hour, made little impact on the outcome of the game but it inked Ashraful's name in the history of cricket for producing the fastest fifty in Tests in terms of minutes.

That was Ashraful unplugged. In the same year, in South Africa, he produced the fastest fifty in T20s off 20 balls to reduce West Indies to a pulp. Two years back, in 2005 at Cardiff, England, he stunned the world champion Australia and the world with a run-a-ball hundred that resulted in one of the most memorable upsets in modern cricket.

An inning of similar magnitude came against South Africa at Guyana in the 2007 World cup. The knock of 87 off 83 balls allowed Bangladesh to shock South Africa and register another dramatic win.

This was what Ashraful was capable of. At his peak, he could swing the fate of the game as quickly as he demoralized bowling units and on several occasions, he did that. In a glorious style and with a charm. He was truly the 'wonder boy' of Bangladesh cricket.

But along with his fearless approach, innovative stroke play and a complete disregard for the bowlers, he had the habit of throwing away his wicket. A flaw that became a trademark and ended up plaguing the right-hand batsman's career.

Ashraful ended his career with a batting average of 24 in Tests and 22.23 in ODIs, a serious injustice to his abilities. He scored 3468 ODI runs and 2737 Test runs in his decade-long international career. And also has under his belt nine international hundreds, each one special in its own way.