Chief selector Faruque Ahmed declared Mashrafee, who was rested during the home series against Sri Lanka as a precautionary measure for his back pain, fully fit to face the Aussie challenge in the Test matches.

The 'Narail Express' replaces Tapash Baisya while wicketkeeper-cum-batsman Mushfiqur Rahim is the other notable absentee in the squad from the preceding series against Sri Lanka.

Left-arm spinners Manjarul Islam and Abdur Razzak were the other players who were eliminated from the 18-member preliminary list.

"Mashrafee is fully fit to play the longer-version of the game and no doubt his return will offer us a very sweet headache while selecting the two new ball bowlers. It is great that we are going to get back our main strike bowler in action against the toughest team in the world," said Faruque during the home side's practice at the Mirpur indoor facilities yesterday.

"Definitely we will put more emphasis in our spin department. In that case we have to take a tough decision about axing an inform paceman. If we consider current form, our two new pacers (Shahadat Hossain and Syed Rasel) did excellent job but we all know what an exceptional player Mashrafee is. He has already proved that he can give any team in the world a tough time," he added.

The former national skipper also explained young Mushfiqur's exclusion from the Test side. "We just kept him out of the squad; not dropped him. We still believe he has the ability to play better cricket in the longer version but we thought that another failure might demoralise him."

Faruque said that they had a very simple task when selecting the team and felt no pressure despite the opponents being mighty Australians.

"The boys are playing good cricket, so we have had very little to think about while selecting the team. And mind it, there is hardly any scope to think about experimentation against a team like Australia. Our main target is to play our normal cricket and to be as competitive as possible against them," he said.

The chief selector however was excited with the fact that boys are not scared to face Australia.

"Once it was our belief that it is impossible to beat Australia but we have overcome that mental barrier after Sophia Gardens. And we now believe that we have the ability to repeat it on a given day," he added.

TEST SQUAD
Habibul Bashar (captain), Khaled Mashud (vice-captain), Javed Omar, Nafees Iqbal, Aftab Ahmed, Mohammad Ashraful, Rajin Saleh, Shahriar Nafees, Alok Kapali, Mohammad Rafique, Mashrafee-Bin-Mortuza, Enamul Huque, Shahadat Hossain and Syed Rasel.