Why Ashraful is important? When we started playing test, we focused on lasting 3 days. Gradually, in one-dyers, we became a team who can beat any team in the world in our day. Which is significantly important but unfortunately it is not yet same for the Test Cricket. It is the player like Ashraful who made it possible for our one-day games. But he is very inconsistent in Test Cricket. He is the one that any opponents, even the best, look to get rid off. Because they know what he is capable of. Whether with the assistance from the umpire (in New Zealand) or by any means (through research) means, they look to get him out ASAP. He is a threat to any opponent but in test cricket he is still a threat but his batting has not been compiled.
Now, rather talking about whether he should be in the test team or not, I would like to bring into your attention a different prospective.
How many times did we hear in the commentary about his weaknesses and problems? He is a very capable player and well respected by the opponents as mentioned above but my question is what BCB did to help this incredible talent unlike anyone else in our team? How many talents we tried and threw away and when is this cycle on nonsense will stop? Did we get any batting specialist to work with him or with our other batsmen? What initiative did the BCB took regarding it? Did we ever hire any batting consultant? Did we assign any assistant staff to work with these batsman months long to work to remedy their problems? As per as I know, the answer is practically no. Paying salary is not enough. A good organization also takes care of their employee and don’t threat them with ultimatum. A good organization sent their employees to training and brings consultants for improvement. We cannot afford to let these talents trying to troubleshoot their problems on their own only w/o any constructive and meaningful assistance. We need to assist them and nourish and help them because talent like these not going to come very often and if we don't learn on how to nurture them now and our future talents, we will never improve.