Double standards hurt Mominul

Mominul Haque and Soumya Sarkar are both talented players. The national selectors and the head coach will not disagree with that assessment. However, it may sound harsh that they are not being treated the same by the team think-tank when it comes to selecting the national team; you may even raise the question that in this regard there is a double standard. The last few days' speculation turned into reality yesterday when the selectors, including coach Chandika Hathurusingha, announced a 14-member team for the first Test against Australia without Mominul. Mominul's omission was the centre of argument during the lengthy press conference and the explanations from chief selector Minhajul Abedin and Hathurusingha only served to provide further evidence that the diminutive left-hander has not been treated fairly at all.

They made it clear that Mominul, a specialist at the crucial number three spot, was dropped for his poor averaging around 28 in his last three Tests. The management seems to have overlooked that in the first of those he played a gem of an innings against New Zealand at Wellington where the little man conquered all the adversities along with Tamim Iqbal to set a platform for Shakib Al Hasan.

Perhaps that invaluable 64 was not up to the management's standards. The decision could be accepted without objection if it was in keeping with a consistent policy. But over the last two years they have been saying that they want to give a player enough time to establish their position and they followed it to the letter for Soumya. The selectors and coach showed enough patience towards Soumya in persisting with him in the one-day squad.

Since his 90-run innings against South Africa in July 2015, Soumya scored 85 runs in 8 matches at the average of 12.14 before finally getting back among the runs with 61 against New Zealand and an unbeaten 87 against Ireland that was followed by another bad patch in the next five matches.

One may say that performances in Tests cannot be compared to those in ODIs. While that is true, the comparison stands if you are talking of consistency in national team selection. The lack of that consistency was further highlighted when the chief selector pointed out that Imrul Kayes -- who the management wants to forcefully establish at number three despite the fact that his best performances came as an opener -- has a good home record, which presumably justifies his inclusion ahead of Mominul, who however has a very healthy home average of over 58.

We don't want to believe that Soumya is a blue-eyed boy of our coach and Mominul is a pariah in his eyes. We want to believe that Hathurusingha has no bias when he picks a player. There have been whispers that Hathurusingha -- the most successful Bangladesh coach -- was behind the axing of Mominul; and when Minhajul tried to deflect the volley of questions from the reporters towards the coach that impression was strengthened.

If we compare Soumya's ODI fate with Mominul's in Tests, it's hard to believe that it was his performance that actually saw him out of the team; instead it now has to be asked whether Hathurusingha is following the tradition of some previous coaches who favoured players.

If there was a better number three replacing him, there would have been fewer questions. But in the end, Mominul's exclusion from the team seems unfair.