Akbar Ali, Afif Hossain, and Mominul Haque—three batters on different spectra of the national team and on different stages of their careers—shone bright on the opening day of the Bangladesh Cricket League one-day version on Monday.

Akbar and Afif both struck match-winning hundreds for North Zone and South Zone, respectively, while Mominul’s 83 off 82 came in a losing cause for East Zone.

Akbar, the former Under-19 World Cup-winning captain, who recently led Rangpur to back-to-back NCL T20 titles, along with a longer version crown, is yet to make his international debut.

Regarded as one of the finest cricket brains of his generation, Akbar has been knocking on the door for quite a while.

His innings of 111 off 87 has come at a time when the ODI series against Pakistan is just around the corner. However, the 24-year-old reiterated the fact that it’s not under his control whether a call-up comes or not.

‘See, this is beyond my control. My job is to try to play well in the field, and I will be trying to do that inshallah,’ said Akbar.

‘The rest is up to those who make the call. But this is beyond my control,’ he added.

Mominul, on the other hand, played the last of his 28 ODIs back in 2018, while his last T20I was in 2014.

Regarded as one of the finest to don the Test shirt for Bangladesh, the left-hander often expressed his disappointment over his cut-short white-ball career for the national team.

He said that no Test player should come around in the existing culture.

‘If you prepare someone for the red ball all day long, it will be a bad example. How? Because if a child dreams to be a Test cricketer, he or she will see that the likes of Shadman or Mominul aren’t able to play white-ball cricket; they only play red ball, and that too after a five-month-long gap,’ Mominul expressed his frustration.

Mominul also mentioned the financial condition of the red-ball specialist players. In Bangladesh, a chunk of the money from domestic cricket comes from the white-ball leagues.

‘I will say that Test players shouldn’t be made in Bangladesh. Because you are not able to play any white ball game. To me, this is a bad example,’ he said.

Afif, on the contrary, is mostly regarded as a white-ball specialist. However, once a regular feature, his last international game was in 2024.

Often considered a finisher in the white-ball format, Afif struck an unbeaten 100 off 86 balls while coming in at four in the first match of the BCL on Monday.

He said that he just tried to follow the process when he was asked whether it was a statement from him regarding his batting position.

‘There is nothing to give a statement or something. I am not a new player, as I have been playing for quite a time now,’ he said.

‘I always bat at four-five in the Dhaka League. So I don’t think there’s something like a statement. I just have tried to maintain the process,’ he added.

How the trio will follow with their performances of the first match remains to be seen. But at a time when the national team lacks specialist middle-order batters in ODI format, their performance should give the selectors some options to consider.