Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan revealed that they will check Shakib Al Hasan's availability for the next two years before naming the new ODI captain for the men's national cricket team. Hassan also hinted that they are looking for a long-term solution and might name Litton Das as their new captain ahead of the Asia Cup 2023 and the ICC ODI World Cup 2023.
The veteran batter and nation's leading run-scorer Tamim Iqbal stepped down from captaincy on Thursday (August 3) and is also ruled out of the Asia Cup 2023 which begins on August 30. Litton Das is the designated vice-captain of the ODI team and stepped up to lead the team in Tamim's absence in the recent ODIs against Afghanistan at home.
"We have not discussed captaincy yet. We have to take a break and think about it. As I have said before, if it was one series, we could have gone with the vice-captain (Litton) but now we have to think long-term," Nazmul told reporters on Saturday.
Bangladesh have no matches scheduled till the Asia Cup tournament so there will be no time to experiment with new faces for the captaincy role. Nazmaul revealed that Shakib remains the obvious choice to lead the team in Asia Cup and World Cup as they are not sure about the new player handling pressure on big stages.
"There are two problems. If we think about the long term it is one thing. But there is the World Cup as well and the pressure of the World Cup is not small. If I select a new guy and whether he can take this pressure - we need to consider that as well. If we choose someone on a long-term basis and he is not available after one year, what will we do? So we need to discuss these things. Shakib is the obvious choice but can you say he will play for two years? We don't know that and so we need to know his plan and talk with the board. I think the easiest choice is Shakib and there is no problem with it," Nazmul added.
Shakib, 36, is likely to lead the team in the upcoming tournaments while Litton is the leading candidate to captain the team after the World Cup in India.
