Tamim’s T20I career on the line

Tamim Iqbal’s twenty20 international career is on the line as the 32-year-old batsmen is not in Bangladesh Cricket Board’s plans for the shortest format.

Tamim, on Wednesday, published a video message on his verified Facebook account saying that he is making himself unavailable for the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup as he feels it is unfair to claim his place back in the team despite not playing T20Is for Bangladesh for more than a year and a half.

The BCB held its 11th board director’s meeting on Wednesday afternoon. And after the meeting, the board declared the list of nationally contracted players from May to December 2021, where Tamim was not picked for T20Is.

Though Tamim clearly said in his video message that he is not retiring from T20Is, he is just skipping the T20 World Cup, but if he finds an option to play T20 at home or abroad, he will pick it.

But the chances are looking thin for Tamim in T20 as his performances at the domestic level is also not very impressive in this format.

Tamim played in the Bangabandhu T20 cup for Fortune Barishal, where he was the second-highest run-getter in the tournament with 324 runs from nine matches. But his strike rate was only 115.30, and the team ended up being fourth out of five teams.

The left-handed opener played for Prime Bank Cricket Club in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League, held in the T20 format, and before skipping the super league phase due to knee injury, Tamim scored 306 runs from 11 matches with a strike rate of 113.75.

Tamim featured in the playoff round of Pakistan Super League 2020, which took place in November, where he scored 83 runs in three matches for Lahore Qalandars with the

highest score of 35 in the final, but his strike rate was only 122.05.

Tamim last played a T20I for Bangladesh in March 9, 2020, and since then, he has played 23 T20 matches in various tournaments but skipped 17 T20Is for Bangladesh.

Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Tamim’s predecessor as Bangladesh’s one-day captain, thinks that the left-hander took a brave and timely decision to skip the T20 World Cup.

“Tamim is always welcome inside the dressing room but his thoughts were will he be welcomed by the teammates in the World Cup after missing 16 matches in a row and without any match practice? Tamim’s decision was brave, that will create the instability in the top-order,” he wrote on his official Facebook ID.

After the T20 World Cup, Bangladesh is scheduled to play six more T20 matches, three against Pakistan and three against New Zealand. The latest BCB contract shows that they have no intention to pick Tamim for those matches as he is not in the national T20I contract.

To save the T20 career, Tamim could have used the first round of the T20 World Cup where the Tigers will face oppositions like Oman, Papuan New Guinea and Scotland, and some runs under the belts could give him confidence for the main stage.

But Tamim willingly skipped the opportunity, which Mashrafe thinks will make him a good leader for the ODI.

“I think for this decision when Tamim will take the field on his next match as ODI captain, these boys will keep their lives at stake for him,” as he wrote in his Facebook status.

But surely this brave decision might put his T20 career on the line, and the match against Zimbabwe at Sylhet could be his last T20I for Bangladesh, the same venue where Mashrafe played his final ODI as Bangladesh captain.