Dhaka:  Bangladesh's cricket selectors have dropped out-of-form batsmen Mohammad Ashraful and Rajin Saleh from a 13-man squad for the first three one-day internationals against Zimbabwe.

"Ashraful and Rajin are not in form and so they have been dropped from the squad," chief selector Faruk Ahmed told sources on yesterday.

Middle-order batsman Tushar Imran returned to the squad after being ignored for the recent Champions Trophy in India.

Zimbabwe will play five one-dayers and a Twenty20 international on their upcoming tour of Bangladesh. The Twenty20 match begins on November 28 at Khulna, followed by the first one-dayer at the same venue on November 30.

Saleh and Ashraful are among the four Bangladeshi batsmen to score a century in one-day internationals, but have been struggling for runs in recent matches.

Ashraful's hundred came in his team's famous victory over world champions Australia in a triangular series match at Cardiff in England last year. He is also the country's youngest batsman to make a Test hundred.

Ashraful has scored 1,411 runs in 78 one-day internationals and Saleh 1,005 in 43.
Shahriar Nafees, the only Bangladeshi batsman to score two hundreds in one-dayers, will lead the side in the country's first-ever Twenty20 international.

He scored an unbeaten 123  the highest by a Bangladeshi in the shorter version of the game  in his team's victory over Zimbabwe in the Champions Trophy last month.