CAPTAINS ON THE RUN: While ODI skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza (L) has been sweating it out at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in the last few days, Test captain Mushfiqur Rahim, having returned from his break, joined him for a few running drills yesterday afternoon.
The national selectors have submitted a long-list to the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) for the conditioning camp that will begin from August 22 for the upcoming Test series against Australia. Australia will arrive in Dhaka on September 28 to play two Test matches against the Tigers in Chittagong and Mirpur.
A total of 27 players have been drafted in the list as the selectors will also pick some players from here for the Bangladesh A team as well, who will be touring South Africa and Zimbabwe in October-November. Some members from the High Performance squad will also be chosen for the second-stringed side. The preparation camp for these two series is likely to kick off on September 3.
Bangladesh A will fly for South Africa on October 14 to play two one-day matches and a three-day game and after that they will visit Zimbabwe to play two four-day and three one-day games during their tour from October 28 to November 18.
Will these A team tours bring any hope for former national players such as Shahriar Nafees, Junaed Siddiqui or Alok Kapali? The selectors love to say that they don’t like to write off any player’s chance but in reality they are now more focused on the young talents rather than those who once came up with a lot of promise but failed to deliver.
With utility cricketers like Mahmudul Hasan and Shadman Islam are in the pipeline, the selectors find no reason to go back to the national discards, especially since none of them managed to do anything extraordinary in the domestic circuit.
The notion is that gone are those days when someone enters the team by virtue of another player’s failure. The newcomers are very much aware of the fact that only good performance can keep their place intact; it’s a message that was perhaps best depicted when a promising player like Soumya Sarker didn’t find a place in the playing eleven in the South Africa Tests.
Bangladesh’s national team is going through a good time right now and there is a huge competition among the players to stay in the side; the ones in the side are desperately trying to keep their spots. While bad patches may arrive in the future, the current belief among the think-tank however is that they have enough talent in the pipeline and that focusing on them could provide more rewards than reverting to the former players. “One cannot think about Enamul Haque when there is Taijul Islam and Arafat Sunny,” was the sentiment.
Source: The Daily Star