The last time Towhid Hridoy walked out of Potchefstroom with a trophy in his hands, he was a teenager riding the high of an ICC Under-19 World Cup win in 2020. This time, he left with something far more personal: a record that now belongs solely to him and a statement that the selectors can no longer brush aside.
An unbeaten 350 against South Africa A. The highest first-class score by a Bangladeshi batter. A triple hundred that shoved Tamim Iqbal’s 334* and Raqibul Hasan’s 313* down the list and rewrote a piece of the country’s red-ball history.
And he wasn’t even supposed to be the story.
A late call, a quiet answer
Hridoy only joined the Bangladesh A squad in South Africa because the original touring plans fell apart. Injuries, visa complications, and suddenly the board needed reinforcements. So he flew out with Nurul Hasan, Rishad Hossain and Mohammad Saifuddin, not as a headline act, but as cover. Insurance.
At the airport in Dhaka, when asked about his plans for the four-day games, he barely disguised where his mind really was. Not on a Test audition. Not on red-ball redemption.
For him, this was about acclimatising. White-ball cricket. The upcoming tour of South Africa. The ODI World Cup next year. That was the priority.
“The preparation is very important and as we have a national team tour and the World Cup (ODI), will try to prepare for it,” he told reporters before boarding, framing the trip as a stepping stone for the formats where he is already recognised as a star.
He had waited more than three years for another crack at Test cricket. When it finally came, it lasted just three days.
Thrown in, thrown out
Hridoy’s only Test appearance came on the tour of Zimbabwe in Harare. Picked early, discarded even earlier. One failure in the second Test and the door slammed shut. The experiment, in the eyes of many, was over before it really began.
Some said he had been rushed. Others pointed to his technique and stamped him as a white-ball specialist. Very few stood up and argued he should be backed in the Test side the way others had been.
The national selection panel often insists that breaking into the Bangladesh side is hard, but once you’re in, you will get your share of chances to prove yourself in any format. Hridoy’s case has stood as the uncomfortable exception.
He knew it. That’s why, ahead of this A tour, he refused to talk big about his Test ambitions. No bold declarations. No public demands. Just a shrug towards the reality that his future in whites did not rest in his own hands.
A record in whites, a future in doubt
Then came Potchefstroom. A ground that already meant something to him. A stage he turned into his own.
The lack of expectation freed him. No chatter in his own head about Test recalls. No fixation on red-ball politics. Just time in the middle, against a strong South Africa A attack, in conditions he wanted to understand for white-ball cricket.
He ended with 350 not out.
Only the third Bangladeshi to score a triple hundred in first-class cricket. The highest of them all. A marathon innings that stretched beyond numbers and into the realm of narrative: the so-called white-ball batter dominating in the longest format, in foreign conditions, while barely talking about red-ball dreams.
After the game, when asked again about Test cricket and red-ball plans, he did not bite.
“This is not entirely my call, as a professional player I always want to do well, I have said this on many occasions before, how many matches I will play for the national team will depend on the selectors, if I get the opportunity I will try to do well,” he said.
No fireworks. No challenge thrown at the system. Just a calm reminder that he can only control what happens between the boundary ropes.
A question the selectors cannot dodge
Hridoy will now sit at the centre of every discussion before Bangladesh name their next Test squad. His 350* against South Africa A is too big, too symbolic, to be filed away as just another A-team performance.
The numbers demand attention. The context demands more.
Because the real issue is no longer just whether he gets picked. It is whether he is trusted. Whether he is given the kind of runway in red-ball cricket that matches the scale of his talent and this landmark innings, instead of being ushered in and out of the Test dressing room as an afterthought.
The challenge for the selectors is clear: if they bring him back, they must convince him — and the dressing room — that this time he will be allowed to fail, to learn, and to grow in whites. Not be judged on a handful of days, as he was in Harare.
For now, Hridoy is not losing sleep over it. That detachment, intentional or not, turned into his greatest strength in Potchefstroom. It let him bat long, bat free, and bat like a man with nothing to prove and everything to gain.
The scoreboard shows 350*. The real question is whether Bangladesh finally treat that as the beginning of his red-ball story, not the end of another brief chapter.
