Faruque Ahmed was officially announced as the president of Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on 21 August. Yet, just two months in, governance issues are already surfacing within the board. While former president Nazmul Hassan Papon ran operations like a one-man show, Faruque appears to be centralising operations similarly, as seen in skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto’s captaincy situation.
Bangladesh’s all-format captain Najmul Hossain Shanto expressed a wish to step down from captaincy after the ongoing South Africa Test series, the first match of which the Tigers lost by seven wickets in Mirpur last week and the final game to be played in Chattogram from tomorrow.
Batting debacles are a regularity in Bangladesh cricket and they appear to be happening more frequently in recent times.
Miraz has been involved in all three latest fightbacks with the bat in Tests after a top-order collapse.
The third T20I between Bangladesh and India on Saturday in Hyderabad was a dead rubber, with the hosts already up by 2-0 in the series. From a Bangladeshi perspective, the main point of interest in the match was whether the Tigers could put on an improved showing, especially on the batting front.
On Friday, on a visit to the First Lancer Ground in Hyderabad’s Syed Nagar area, the hub for cricket in the locality, this correspondent came across Jayed Khan, a young fast bowler with dreams of making it big as a cricketer.
It rained in Hyderabad yesterday afternoon, a day before the third and final T20I between Bangladesh and India, but soon it ebbed away giving way to sunshine, although not for very long.
The streets of the Shankargarh village area were packed with incoming traffic at 5:00 PM, some two hours before the first T20I between India and Bangladesh yesterday. There was tight security but that hardly dampened the fans’ excitement for the game in Gwalior, where international cricket had returned after 14 years.
After being dealt a crushing blow by Afghanistan in the first match of the 2022 Asia Cup, Sri Lanka captain and all-rounder Dasun Shanaka opined that Afghanistan were a much more difficult hurdle than their Group B opponents Bangladesh.
Bangladesh appear to be the fifth-best among the top five teams heading into the Asia Cup tournament.
T20I skipper for just a series, Nurul Hasan Sohan's injury triggered chaos and exposed the lack of clarity in the decision-making of the Bangladesh national team's think tank once again.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) arranged a get-together and lunch for cricketers at a city hotel today and, although members of the team management downplayed the significance of the ‘special’ lunch ahead of the Tigers’ tour of Zimbabwe, scraping past the surface the motive may have been to communicate some issues to the senior stars who might have been left a bit disappointed with the BCB’s refurbishment of the T20I line-up for the upcoming T20I series.
Legendary Pakistan pacer Wasim Akram was in favour of scrapping the ODI format as Test and T20 cricket gain more ground across the world, fueling the flames of the ODI format’s uncertain future that came to the fore when England’s Ben Stokes recently chose to retire from the 50-over game.
It has long been understood that Bangladesh find it easier to meet the challenges of the ODI format.
Following the T20 World Cup debacle in the UAE last year, there were talks in the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) hierarchy about finding a new direction for the T20I team.
The last time Bangladesh played a Test series in West Indies, Kemar Roach hobbled away to a fifer, conceding just eight runs in Antigua, the
Usually, when a new Test captain is appointed, the first focus is on the direction he wants to take the team. But Bangladesh’s newly instated captain is yet to speak about his plans for the team or the brand of cricket he wants to see it play.
Spin coach Rangana Herath is conducting a four-day spin camp with 32 spinners in order to strengthen the spin-bowling pipeline. It became apparent that there was a lack of spinners around the periphery of the national team when Bangladesh played the recent Dhaka Test against Sri Lanka with four front-line bowlers despite Shakib Al Hasan being there. Mosaddek Hossain came in as a batter who can bowl and the burden of majority of the overs fell on Taijul Islam and Shakib.