Did captaincy shield Najmul Hossain Shanto's descent into anonymity in the T20 format?  

Shanto was appointed Bangladesh's all-format captain in February 2024, and eight months later, he notified the board that he wanted to relinquish his duties as the Tigers' T20I skipper. 

Bangladesh are slated to play 16 T20Is against the UAE, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India ahead of the 2025 Asia Cup. An additional six matches against the West Indies and Ireland will follow. With a packed T20 calendar and Shanto's declining performances in the format, his inclusion in the squad becomes increasingly difficult to justify.

Shanto's form took a nosedive after he took on the responsibility of leading the Tigers. In the 24 T20Is he captained, he amassed 394 runs at an average of 18.76 and a strike-rate of 104.23. A solitary half-century during that stretch only reinforces the grim numbers. There is no need to explain how dreadful those stats are and when compared to his career average (22.85) and strike-rate (108.35), one does not need to dive deeper into trying to understand why the 20-over format was getting too hot to handle for Shanto. 

With Shanto's abysmal form in the shortest format and the safety net of captaincy now out of the way, the question arises: Can Shanto, the batter, warrant a place in Bangladesh's T20I setup?

Shanto's slump from being the top run-getter in the 2023 edition of the Bangladesh Premier League to not even being a regular in the latest edition of the country's only franchise-based T20 tournament speaks volumes about how the left-hander had gradually lost his credibility as a performer in the format. In the 2024 edition, he managed just 175 runs in 12 matches without clearing the boundary once. Things worsened in 2025 when he could barely crack the starting XI for eventual champions Fortune Barishal. He scraped together just 56 runs in five games and was even deployed as a wicketkeeper -- an alarming sign of desperation to justify his presence.

The 26-year-old undoubtedly has been one of the most backed players in Bangladesh's history, with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) hell-bent on making sure that one of their biggest investments can have ample opportunity to turn his own fortunes and provide big-time returns. But the burden of captaincy certainly had taken the toll on Shanto. His reluctance to keep going as T20I captain provided an impression that the 26-year-old could not quite match the metamorphosis that everyone had in mind.

Bangladesh were led to a 3-0 sweep of the West Indies by Liton Das in the Caribbean earlier this year as Shanto could not make the tour due to an injury. While the top-order batting was not always up to the mark in that series, it can definitely be said that the batter Shanto was not missed.  

Bangladesh have a number of top-order options, namely Liton, Soumya Sarkar, Parvez Emon, and Tanzid Tamim, all of whom who have been showing more promise and intent in T20Is than Shanto, and are better aligned with meeting the format's high-octane demands.

Now, with the upcoming T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka in February 2026 drawing near, the selectors have quite the dilemma to deal with. 

Will they continue with Shanto in hopes of an unlikely resurgence as a top-order batter in the T20I side? Or, will they choose to bank on the others to come through, given the significant number of matches the Tigers have coming up?