Asia Cup squad sans Tamim

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) announced its squad for the Asia Cup yesterday which is due to begin on March 24 in Dhaka. There has only been one change made from the ICC World Twenty20 squad announced earlier this month.

Opener Tamim Iqbal, whose wife is expected to give birth to the couple's first child during that period, had asked for and was granted leave and as a result will not be able to take part in the Asia Cup, which is being held in the Twenty20 format for the first time.

He has been replaced by left-handed opener Imrul Kayes. Imrul had a fantastic 2015, and excelled in T20 cricket. Imrul made valuable contributions whenever he got chances as a back-up opener since the last 50-over World Cup in early 2015. In Test cricket he has averaged 54 in 2015 with a high score of 150 and he scored 76 and 73 against Zimbabwe in the two ODIs he played since the World Cup. He was by far the most exciting Bangladeshi batsman in the Bangladesh Premier League, where with 300 runs he was the second highest run-scorer. Imrul is also in the standby list in the World T20 squad.

SQUAD

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Imrul Kayes, Soumya Sarkar, Mohamad Mithun, Mahmuduallah Riyad, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Nurul Hasan, Sabbir Rahaman, Nasir Hossain, Arafat Sunny, Mustafizur Rahman, Al-Amin Hossain, Taskin Ahmed, Abu Hider