Bangladesh has announced their squad for three ODIs against Sri Lanka later this month. The questions on Mashrafe Mortaza’s retirement have been put to rest as he has been declared skipper of the team, while star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been rested after a successful World Cup outing.
Shakib had the best World Cup campaign for any all-rounder scoring 606 runs and took 11 wickets in the competition. Along with him, Liton Das has also being rested and Abu Jayed, who didn't play a single game in the World Cup, misses out.
Bangladesh chief selector Minhajul Abedin said, “We didn't make big chances from the World Cup squad here. As we don't have Shakib and Liton, we include two players in their places and dropped one player. We need a left-arm spinner so Taijul is going with the team. He is now playing in India. Anamul Haque is going there as a replacement of Liton.”
“We have five one-day matches against Afghanistan A at home and our BCB XI is also participating in a four-day tournament in India. To cope up everything, we made a 14-member squad. In Sri Lanka, we have just three ODIs,” he added.
Anamul Haque, who has been picked up to replace Liton, has scored over 1000 runs in ODIs at an average of 30.5 and over 4000 runs in List A cricket at an average of 33.38.
Abedin praised Anamul saying, “Anamul has been performing consistently in domestic matches. He is doing well in both longer version and ODI format. We included him keeping all these in our mind. He is playing for A team and the High-Performance head coach gave us positive feedback about him. Because of that, we included him in the squad.”
“We didn't change much in the middle-order so Yasir Rabbi could not get a place here. We keep him as stand-by. We need a batsman at top-order so we pick Anamul.”
The three ODIs between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will be played on 26 July, 28 July and 31 July 2019 at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.
Bangladesh squad for ODI series against Sri Lanka:
Mashrafe Mortaza (Captain), Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mahmudullah Riad, Mohammad Mithun, Mosaddek Hossain Saikat, Sabbir Rahman, Rubel Hossain, Mustafizur Rahman, Anamul Haque Bijoy, Mehedi Hasan Miraz, Mohammad Saifuddin and Taijul Islam
(Source: Cricbuzz)
