Bangladesh national team cricketers for the tour of Zimbabwe met for lunch at a five-star hotel in Dhaka Monday.
According to Bangladesh Cricket Board and national team director Khaled Mahmud, the meet arranged by the board’s cricket operations committee was simply to speak on the coordination going forward into the series.
Mahmud due to illness missed out from Bangladesh’s previous tour, of the West Indies and thus wanted to speak to the players over a meal.
It is understood that there has been discussion on the BCB’s move to send a relatively young T20I side for the tour of the African nation.
It has been well documented in the fraternity that the T20I team in Zimbabwe will be led by young wicketkeeper-batter Nurul Hasan Sohan as part of stop-gap arrangement and afterwards the charge will be handed over to ace all-rounder Shakib al Hasan, who is on leave from the series.
Though BCB stated that the national team management has come to the decision to try and test a young team against lower ranked Zimbabwe with Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim rested for this series only, it is widely established that the board is mulling not involving the duo at all here onwards in the shortest format of the game.
The move from the BCB has come amid Bangladesh T20I team’s below par performance under captain Mahmudullah.
Former Bangladesh captain and now a member of the BCB, Mahmud however, differed from the claim and stated that the team transition is far away still and that the seniors in Shakib, Tamim Iqbal, Mahmudullah and Mushfiq have more to offer to the team.
“Important for us now is that we have to turn around as a team but I won’t say the transition period [of the seniors handing the charges to the juniors] has started. I believe Tamim, Shakib, Mushfiq and Mahmudullah still have a lot to give to the team. It is important for us to lift the young ones in the team well,” said Mahmud to the media.
Mahmud further claimed that changing the T20I captain from Mahmudullah to Nurul and not having any seniors in the squad is not part of any experiment.
“Many are calling it to be an experiment but this is not true. We have not been able to establish as a team in this format [T20I]. It is simply that we want to try out some new players in this format allowing them to play at important roles and positions. We already know what the seniors are capable of, so we wanted to see how the juniors act,” BCB cricket operations committee vice-chairman Mahmud explained.
Mahmud is in favor of trying out a young team not just in one or two games but through a full series.
“It is important to test a player with enough opportunities rather than in just one or two games. Like for Munim Shahriar, he got to play just one game in the West Indies [T20I series] and was injured in another game [the first T20I was abandoned]. You cannot judge him seeing just one game,” said Mahmud.
Bangladesh ODI and T20I team for the tour of Zimbabwe are scheduled to leave Dhaka in batches starting early Tuesday.
The last batch, involving mostly the ODI players in the shape of Tamim, Mahmudullah and Mushfiq will depart Friday.
The series will start with the three T20Is to be played on July 30, 31 and August 2 and will be followed by the ODIs on August 5, 7 and 10 respectively.
All the matches will be held at Harare Sports Club.