The Bangladesh Cricket Board is likely to announce a new-look 14-member squad for the four-match Twenty20 home series against Zimbabwe in a day or two. The tour itinerary is, however, still undecided although sources confirmed January 14 as the date for the first encounter.
With the Under-19 World Cup scheduled in Dhaka, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar, Sylhet has been selected as the venue for the home series and Dhaka Tribune learned that the BCB cricket operations is looking to send the team to Sylhet on January 8 to give the players a week to adopt to the conditions.
“We will submit the 14-member squad today (yesterday). We had selected the preliminary squad given that we have many Twenty20 commitments in months time. So these are the 27 cricketers that we have in plan. For now we will be using 14 of them in the Zimbabwe series and see if the combination works,” said member of the BCB national selection panel Minhajul Abedin.
Minhajul also added that there will be some changes in the squad from their last Twenty20 series, which was also against Zimbabwe in November.
“We will surely have some changes from the last Twenty20 squad. We will see some new faces. To be honest we have tried to put up a best possible squad ahead of the Asia Cup Twenty20 and ICC World Twenty20,” said the former Bangladesh cricketer.
Sylhet International Cricket Stadium, formerly known as the Sylhet Divisional Stadium, turned into an international venue in 2014 when it hosted the ICC World Twenty20 and ICC Women’s World Twenty20 in 2014.
This will be the first time the senior team will play at the venue. Earlier in 2013 the Tigers were scheduled to play a Twenty20 series against New Zealand which was later shifted to the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium due to ongoing construction work at the stadium.
