Musaddek Hossain Saikat will lead Bangladesh in the third and final match of the three-match Twenty20 International series against Zimbabwe at Harare on Monday, said a media release from Bangladesh Cricket Board.

Nurul Hasan Sohan, who was made captain for the T20I series against Zimbabwe suffered a finger injury during the second match of the series which ruled him out of the entire tour. He took the return flight to Dhaka on Monday as he is out for three weeks, making him unavailable for the three-match One Day International series as well.

Mahmudullah, the former T20I captain who lost his place and role in the team after the West Indies tour has been recalled as a replacement for Nurul Hasan.

Mahmudullah is already in Zimbabwe as he is a part of the ODI team which will play the three-match series starting from August 5 at the same venue.

Musaddek becomes the ninth cricketer to lead Bangladesh in T20I, the off-spinning all-rounder is going through a purple patch as he just claimed his career-best bowling in T20I on Sunday.

The Abahani skipper was out of international cricket for almost a year but after the Dhaka Premier League 2021-22 he is getting picked in the national team for every format despite not being in the central contract with the BCB.

Musaddek was the third-highest scorer in the DPL’s last season and picked 16 wickets, under his leadership Abahani became fourth.

His long wait for making a comeback to the national team came to an end when Musaddek was called in as a replacement for injured Nayeem Hasan in the second Test of the two-match series against Sri Lanka in Dhaka.

Though Musaddek could not do anything impressive, he was picked for all three formats in the West Indies tour.

He played in the second and third ODI on the West Indies tour, got a chance to bat in the third one, and made 14 runs.

He made 15 and 10* in two T20I matches against West Indies which was enough for him to hold his place in the Zimbabwe tour.

Against Zimbabwe, he performed poorly in the first T20I but in the second one, he picked five wickets that handed Bangladesh a series-leveling win.

Liton Kumar Das led Bangladesh in a T20I match against New Zealand in 2021 and he was likely to lead the team as the wicket-keeper batsman is made vice-captain in Test but the BCB top-brass did not want to burden him much,

“We have two options, Liton and Musaddek. Liton is batting very well, my personal opinion is it will not be wise to disturb him with the burden of captaincy at this moment”, said BCB director and chairman of cricket operations committee Jalal Yunus to the media.

Before making Nurul Hasan the captain for the Zimbabwe series and dropping Mahmudullah, the BCB officials said that they want to tweak the T20 team as results are not coming.

But after BCB president Nazmul Hasan arrived from the UK where he went to attend the ICC meeting, he told the reporters at the airport that Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim were rested because there are many matches coming up.

The BCB president’s reflection is visible in the latest decision as an off-spinning all-rounder is replacing a wicket-keeper batsman in the third and final T20I of the series against Zimbabwe.