The post has been vacant since Tamim Iqbal stepped down due to his injury concern. Shakib Al Hasan, the Test and T20 captain of the side is hot favourite to replace Tamim, with BCB president Nazmul Hassan Papon on Saturday saying that appointing the ace all-rounder is the easiest choice.
The BCB basically wants to appoint a captain for the long term. Shakib, earlier, led the ODI team twice–from 2009 till 2011– winning 22 matches out of 47 and in specific games in 2015 and 2017. His overall record of 23 wins as ODI captain is right behind Mashrafe Bin Mortaza (50) and Habibul Bashar Sumon (29) for the most games won as Bangladesh captain.
Veteran Mushfiqur Rahim is another from the current crops who led the side in 11 wins in 37 games but it is understood, he is unwilling to take up the role again. As it stands, Liton should be the automatic choice for taking the captaincy role but since the board wants a long-term solution, his prospect looks bleak.
“If it’s just a matter of one series, we could have given the role to the vice-captain but we want a long-term solution and therefore we need to have a long discussion,” BCB president Nazmul Hassan Papon said on a day when Tamim decided to give up the captaincy.
The captain of the Bangladesh team will be nominated for the Asia Cup and the World Cup. But who will be the captain? Shakib or Liton? That was the big question.
In the end, the captain was not settled. It was strongly said from the top level of BCB that the task of nominating the captain will be completed in the emergency meeting on Tuesday itself. It means that by this afternoon or evening it will be known who is the new ODI captain instead of Tamim Iqbal? For that purpose, BCB Board of Directors members sat in a meeting at BCB office at Mirpur Sher Bangla Stadium at around 3:15 PM today.
but no In the end the new ODI captain was not selected. The board directors met together and decided that BCB president Nazmul Hasan Papon will nominate the new ODI captain.
BCB Director and Cricket Operations Committee Chairman Jalal Yunus told reporters at around 4:30 pm on Tuesday, “You know we had an emergency meeting today. One of the reasons for calling the emergency meeting was about the captaincy. Basically, there was talk of selecting the captain of the Asia Cup.
We sat in the board meeting today. Later we all from the board to select the captaincy of the honorable board president. We have given him the responsibility to select the captain. He now thinks about how many proven candidates there are for the captaincy and talks to them and he will make the final.
“Hopefully, we will decide and let you know before we have a date line, I mean before August 12th (though Jalal mistakenly said September 12th) or we have a dateline.”
