Jaker leaves no stone unturned in his attempt to cement place in Test squad

Jaker Ali, the right-handed wicket-keeper batter, came into the scene as a T20I specialist but is slowly cementing his place in the longer-version of the game.

On the third day of the two-match Test series opener against West Indies in Antigua, he rescued Bangladesh from the embarrassment of following-on courtesy his second Test fifty.

Jaker, who showed his ability in the longer-version cricket with a fifty against South Africa, added 68 runs with Taijul Islam for the seventh wicket as Bangladesh managed to cross 251, the score required to avoid the follow-on mark.

West Indies were hoping to wrap up the innings soon after Mehidy Hasan was dismissed at 166 for 6, but Jaker and Taijul scripted an unlikely revival act. The two were disciplined in their approach and bided their time to score the odd boundary, along with rotating the strike whenever there was an opportunity to do so.

Jaker hit four boundaries with a pull and a hook on his way to his 53. Jaker told Cricbuzz ahead of the Test series that he is well aware that he needs to take calculated risk while playing with the tail-enders.

"I know when I get a chance in the playing XI, I will have to play with the tail-enders and prepared myself according to it mentally.

"I used to play at seven before and only recently I was promoted up the order in domestic cricket. I have had many partnerships with the tail-enders from my early days. "I try to build my innings that way and I have the preparation for that," Jaker said.

Jaker added that he was waiting for his time to express himself in Test cricket as he knew that it will come sooner than later considering he was scoring runs regularly in domestic cricket.

"I always wanted to be an across format cricketer. I had been doing well in domestic for some time (in first-class cricket) and was scoring runs consistently. I always knew that I would get a chance in Tests at some point on the basis of my consistent performance. And the most important thing is mindset," said Jaker.

"Whatever format you play, if you play with proper mindset and preparation, you have a better chance of doing something good. Biggest difference between Test and T20 is mindset. You have to bat at the fifth gear for most part in T20s. In Tests, you have to be at first gear and at times change the gear. Even though there is no similarities between the formats, if you fix your mindset it gets easier to get prepared.

"That's what I do. I try to shift gears in T20s while in Test I try to play with a different mind-set that is more focused on staying at the wicket and play according to the merit of the ball," he said.

"When I bat with tail-enders, I have to take calculated risks. At the end of the day, I have to score runs. The thing is, you can take time in Test cricket as there is no hurry. I even tell my friends that I like Test cricket because it will be either first gear or fifth gear, easy."

Jaker earlier revealed to this website that his