FATULLAH (Bangladesh), April 25: Bangladesh's cricket selectors on Tuesday dropped the country's best-known batsman Mohammad Ashraful for the second One-day International against Australia.

Ashraful will be replaced by middle-order batsman and leg spinner Alok Kapali for Wednesday's match, chairman of selectors Faruq Ahmed said.

“Ashraful has had a lean patch for the last few matches. We thought he needed rest for one or two games,” he said.

“There is no doubt he is a very good batsman. But there are also too many expectations from him, which I think have become a burden for him.”

Ashraful, 21, scored five runs from 23 balls in Sunday's first one-dayer in Chittagong which world champions Australia won by four wickets.

Ashraful, whose century led Bangladesh to a memorable one-day victory against Australia in England last year, also failed to get past 50 during his team's 4-0 sweep against Kenya last month.

Kapali, 22, was a last minute exclusion from the Chittagong match after being struck on the face by a ball during a practice session.

Seamer Shahadat Hossain was also included in place of Syed Rasel for Wednesday's game.

“We want to come back,” captain Habibul Bashar said during practice on the eve of the second match. “Our target is to complete the 50 overs and go for a win.”Bangladesh lost the first one-day match Sunday by four wickets, after being bowled out for a paltry 195 runs in 47 overs.

But Australia had to fight hard for 44 overs to reach the winning target of 196 – losing six wickets.

“We were near a win,” Habibul said. “Maybe 20 more runs would have made the difference.”

Habibul, Bangladesh's most prolific batsman, admitted that the batting order was repeating the same mistakes, which needed to be fixed.

“We have to remedy that and make less mistakes,'' he said. “We play well sometimes, we need to gain self-belief that we can play well consistently.”

Teams:

Bangladesh: Habibul Bashar (captain), Khaled Mashud, Shahriar Nafees, Rajin Saleh, Aftab Ahmed, Alok Kapali, Tushar Imran, Mohammad Rafique, Mashrafe Mortuza, Abdur Razzak and Shahadat Hossain.

Australia (from): Ricky Ponting (captain), Adam Gilchrist, Nathan Bracken,

Michael Clarke, Daniel Cullen, Bradley Hogg, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Simon Katich, Brett Lee, Andrew Symonds, James Hopes, Mark Cosgrove, Brett Dorey.—Agencies