Team announcement delayed for Mahmudullah

The national team selectors have already chalked out the teams for the upcoming Zimbabwe tour, where Bangladesh will play three Twenty20 Internationals and three One-Day Internationals, but the T20 captaincy issue remains unresolved.

Bangladesh Cricket Board has already obtained the Government Order (GO) for 25 cricketers accompanied by nine other support staff and team officials. The tour will begin with the T20 series with the first match on July 30 at the Harare Cricket Ground.

But the selectors are yet to announce the team as there is a burning issue regarding the captaincy. Mahmudullah, the current T20 captain, has been performing very poorly. During the last T20 World Cup, Bangladesh put on a hapless performance, and Mahmudullah failed to control the players who ignited the situation with verbal engagements.

Mahmudullah could not control himself, but the last blow came when he was caught on camera during a heated conversation with the team manager Nafis Iqbal on the ferry from St Lucia to Dominica.

Being the T20 captain, Mahmudullah failed to calm the players during their voyage on a rough sea. Rather, he was putting pressure on Nafis to make an emergency evacuation at Martinique, a French colony where the ferry boat halted as part of the journey.

Mahmudullah returned to Dhaka on Thursday and was supposed to meet the board president Nazmul Hassan, but he has left for the ICC meeting. Mahmudullah will leave for Zimbabwe before Nazmul returns, meaning there will be no meetings to discuss the captaincy issue, which Nazmul hinted at after the board meeting. Therefore, the team announcement is getting delayed.

The selectors will not bring big changes in the T20 team that played in the Caribbeans except for the captaincy issue. Either Mahmudullah will be dropped, and someone will take charge as Shakib Al Hasan is the probable captain for the Asia Cup and ICC T20 World Cup.

Or Mahmudullah will stay at the helm for one last series, and then Shakib will begin his new era as the T20 skipper, which he was before being banned for a year due to undisclosed contacts with a bookie.