Shahadat Hossain Dipu's journey to the Bangladesh national dressing room has not been an easy one.
Having lost his father Abdus Sabur, a driver at Chittagong Medical College Hospital, to cancer in 2010, Shahadat's mother and his elder brother Abul Hossain took charge of the family while Shahadat pursued his dream of playing professional cricket.
Shahadat was dropped from the trial of Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishthan and there was a point when he had almost accepted defeat in the journey.
But joining Ispahani Cricket Academy in Chittagong worked wonders as the right-handed batter soon found his way to second-division cricket, turning out for the academy in 2013.
Shahadat got the opportunity to play for the Chittagong district team in the middle of 2014 and went on to seal his place in the World Cup-winning Under-19 side.
“I'm happy, of course. A cricketer's dream is to play for the national team, I'm no different. But I'm thinking about improving my game,” said Shahadat to the media in Mirpur Monday following his first training session with the Bangladesh squad ahead of the upcoming one-off Test at home to Afghanistan.
“When my father died, I was a little boy. I didn't understand what it meant then. But I gradually understood as I was growing up, my elder brother was helping our family. And there was Sudipto bhai, who helped me a lot regarding cricket,” Shahadat recalled the struggling days.
Developing skills on regular basis and having a strong mindset will be key to survival in the national dressing room, believes the newest member of the Test squad.
The 21-year old made his first-class debut in 2021.
He has scored 1,265 runs from 20 first-class games with two hundreds and 10 half-centuries.
His performance for the Bangladesh A team recently earned him a place in the Test fold.
He came to the limelight with an 80-run innings against the India A side in Sylhet last December and last week played two effective knocks of 73 and 50 in the second unofficial Test match against the West Indies A team, also in Sylhet.
“I was playing in the A side. There were three matches there. I was focused on that, to do well for the A team. The rest I did not know. The selectors didn't say anything like that, about getting selected,” he said.
“I will try to improve my skills every day. I will try to become stronger mentally. That's my job. The more I improve, the easier it will be for me to play.”
Afghanistan cricket team are scheduled to reach Dhaka this Saturday and feature in the only Test in Mirpur from June 14-18.
There will be a break to the series for Eid-ul-Azha after which the Afghans will return to Bangladesh on July 1 to complete the series and in this phase play three one-day internationals scheduled to be held in the port city on July 5, 8 and 11 respectively.
Both Bangladesh and Afghanistan will then travel to Sylhet to fight it out in the two Twenty20 internationals on July 14 and 16 respectively.
