Sylhet Sixers have appointed Pakistani pacer Sohail Tanvir as their captain in place of David Warner for the remaining matches of the ongoing BPL 6 season.
Australian David Warner was the captain for Sixers in their first seven matches of the season. But the left-handed batsman left the squad and returned home for a surgery on his injured elbow. Now Sixers have given the captaincy role to the experienced T20 campaigner Tanvir who has played 304 matches so far in this format for various franchises all over the world.
Tanvir expressed his gratitude to the team management and is hopeful that Sylhet can win the matches required to qualify for the play-offs.
“I have done captaincy so many times, done it for my local team back home in Pakistan. I have done it in the Canadian league as well, so this is nothing new for me. But I’m very honoured and thankful to the management who have trusted my ability. Maybe we are not in the ideal situation at the moment, but we will try our level best to lift up our spirit. It's a matter of one or two games to gain momentum and you never know,” said Sylhet captain after the training session at Mirpur’s academy ground on Tuesday.
Left-handed batsman @davidwarner31 will fly back to Australia for medical checkup following the Sylhet phase of the @Official_BPLT20, confirmed the @SYLSixers in a press release Thursday nighthttps://t.co/dFb9FPINyb#BPLT20 #BPL #T20 #DAVIDWARNER #WARNER #DAVID #CA #SYLHETSIXERS
— Dhaka Tribune Sports (@Sport_DT) January 18, 2019
Sylhet have won two matches out of seven and currently are in the sixth spot of the points table.
Tanvir said he was planning with his coach and compatriot, legendary pacer Waqar Younis about how to improve the side.
“I have worked with Waqar bhai in the Pakistan team. And he is very passionate and there is no language barrier. As far as the plan is concerned, as I said, we take it one game at a time. Yes we have five games, at least we have to win three, four games to keep our chances of making the play offs alive. I have spoken to the boys. Even if we lose two, three games back to back, we can win two three games back to back as well,” he said.
Tanvir admitted Sylhet will miss Warner as he was a key performer and an energetic leader but he believes Sylhet have good replacements in the likes of Jason Roy and the local players are performing well. They just need to perform better as a team and improve their fielding.
“We are gonna miss Warner, not only as a batsman but also as a good leader. He was very energetic in the dug-out as well. And he was leading from the front, he was scoring runs. But we have back up, like Jason Roy and we have good players sitting on the bench. We also have good local players like Taskin (Ahmed), Liton (Das), Sabbir (Rahman). The problem is we have been playing good cricket, but we are not doing it all together. Sometimes we are batting well, but not fielding or bowling well and vice versa. If we can do that all together, I think we have strong team. It’s just a matter of bringing it all together. I think we have a very good chance to make a comeback,” Tanvir concluded.
