'Something extraordinary' needed to stay in Bangladesh team: Imrul Kayes

Having hit a remarkable century for the Bangladesh Cricket Board XI in a warm-up tie against England XI, top-order batsman Imrul Kayes believes average performance can never ensure a place in the national team.

Although the left-handed batsman has spent eight years with Bangladesh, he is still looking for a permanent spot in the limited overs team, reports bdnews24.com.

The 29-year-old batsman, however, blasted 121 off just 91 balls to power the BCB XI to 309-9 at Fatullah's Khan Shaheb Osman Ali Stadium on Tuesday.

His last three One-Day scores are 76, 73 and 37, yet he was dropped for the last two matches against Afghanistan.

He said it occurred to him that he needed to do more when he was warming the bench in the last two matches in the last series.

"(Getting into) the Bangladesh team has become challenging - there's a lot of competition in the team now. Without doing something extraordinary now - it's difficult to stay in the team with average performance," Kayes said after the match on Tuesday.

"The realisation helped me today. I was able to play an innings like this after a long time. I feel great and my confidence, too, has gone high."

"Obviously, this is not an international match but everything was like that. Scoring a century against a team like this gives huge confidence," he added.

--IANS

sam/bg