This is more than just a yes/no question, which makes it impossible for me to vote. Simply going by performance, Ashraful would probably warrant a place in the ODI team but certainly get excluded from the test team. However, as detroitpagla has pointed out - if he's not the captain, who will it be? It's not so much the quality of captaincy that I'm worried about when thinking of replacing him, but rather the fact that owing to the fragile state of our players' mentalities coupled with young age and tripled with inexperience, captaincy might come as an added burden to many, thereby hampering performance. Mashrafe isn't fit to lead mentally or physically and among the only other handful of names that come to mind, Shakib is too young, Razzak isn't a sure shot in the test XI and Rahim still wears nappies.
It's unfortunate that we have to stick to people just because they make appropriate (note that I say appropriate, not decent or great) captains (for whatever reason), e.g. Bashar and now Ashraful albeit their dismal performances on the field, but that's how it's going to be until we have a core group of players in at least their late twenties.
PS: Nothing against Bashar - he's still the best test batsman that we've ever had and I have enough respect for the way he handled a young team off the field, but if we had a couple of more experienced guys in the side, he'd probably have been dropped a few months after the 2007 world cup.
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Screw the IPL, I'm going to the MLC!
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