Najmul Hossain Shanto

Although he made his debut in 2017, and scored two Test hundreds in 2021, it took Najmul Hossain Shanto more than five years to truly establish himself in the Bangladesh side. But once he did, he was rewarded by being appointed Bangladesh's captain in all three formats.

The turnaround in his form came at the 2022 T20 World Cup. He began the tournament uncertain of his place in the XI but finished it as his side's leading run-getter. The clarity in his mind and his shot-making was evident as he turned 2023 into a bumper year, becoming Bangladesh's top run-scorer in every format. He scored 1650 international runs at an average of 42.30 that year, versus 1603 runs at 22.90 between 2017 and 2023. Mostly a No. 3 batter, Shanto cemented his place in the ODI and Test sides in 2023, and also became the first Bangladesh batter to score over 500 runs in a BPL season.

In May that year, he made his first ODI century, in a narrow win over Ireland. A month later he got his first Test hundreds at home - a twin effort in a massive victory over Afghanistan in Mirpur, following it up with a controlled, clinical hundred against a patient New Zealand attack in Bangladesh's next Test. He went into the ODI World Cup having scored a half-century and a hundred in successive Asia Cup matches and kicked off the global tournament with two more 50-plus scores. Although a string of single-digit scores followed, Shanto broke the rut in style with a match-winning 90 in the infamous timed-out match against Sri Lanka - where it was he who pointed out to captain Shakib Al Hasan that Bangladesh had the right to appeal against Angelo Matthews for taking too long to face his first ball. In his first major series as the long-term captain, against Sri Lanka at home in 2024, Shanto led Bangladesh to a 2-1 win in ODIs at home over Sri Lanka, but lost the T20I and Test series. Ahead of the 2024 T20 World Cup, Bangladesh lost a series to USA as well.

Shanto first came to attention through a double-century in a school one-day match, which led to a place in the Bangladesh Under-17s and from there the U-19 World Cups, in 2014 and 2016; in the latter, he was Bangladesh's top run-getter with 259 runs at 64.75. He played his first Test, in Christchurch in 2017, as an injury replacement for Mominul Haque. In between, Shanto had made his first-class debut, reeling off four half-centuries and a hundred in the space of a month in the 2015-16 season.