Mahmudullah mum on Test retirement

Bangladesh twenty20 international skipper Mahmudullah Riyad has decided to stay silent on his Test retirement for now and will only talk about it after the Tigers’ five-match T20I series starting today.

Mahmudullah returned to the Test side after 17 months against Zimbabwe and scored an unbeaten 150. On the last day of the Test, the team gave him a guard of honour, suggesting that it was his final Test.

Despite Mahmudullah not announcing his official retirement from the red-ball format, words from other players, including Test skipper Mominul Haque, suggested that the 35-year-old was leaving the elite format of the game.

After that, he took part in the one-day international and T20I series against Zimbabwe but maintained his silence on the matter.

In the virtual pre-series press conference on Monday, Mahmudullah said that at the moment, he was only focusing on the upcoming Australia series.

“Right now, I am only concerned with the Australia series. I will talk to you later regarding my retirement from red-ball cricket,” the T20I skipper said.

Mahmudullah was dropped from the Test side in February 2020 after a poor run in which he failed to score a fifty in eight innings. The final nail in the coffin came when he played an ambitious shot against Naseem Shah, who was on a hat-trick, to get out on a duck and hand the bowler the hat-trick.