The national selectors are passing a very busy time as they are weighing all of their options before they finalise the 15-member Bangladesh squad for the forthcoming cricket World Cup.
The chief selector, Faruk Ahmed, told the media on Friday that they had already discussed player possibilities and would come up with the final squad before the ICC deadline of January 7.
‘We will announce our final squad by January 4–5,’ Faruk told reporters at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium.
‘Although we have just a week in hand, I hope that we will be able to announce the squad in time as the primary meeting in this regard has already been done.
‘Our next meeting will be held on January 1 or 2 when we will finalise the squad,’ said Faruk.
Faruk stressed the need for four pace bowlers in the national squad for the World Cup considering the condition in Australia and New Zealand although he did not hesitate to express his disappointment about two seasoned campaigners.
‘Al-Amin Hossain and Rubel Hossain could not perform in the Dhaka Premier League games,’ said Faruk
‘But Taskin Ahmed, Mashrafee bin Murtaza, Mohammad Shohid, Abul Hasan Raju have performed well.
‘We have four super league phase of the Premier Division Cricket League left. The players we are watching will get to play two more matches to prove their points before the final squad is set,’ he said.
Faruk also said that they were giving importance to experience rather than youth for the big show. ‘We have no scope to take any new player from the Dhaka Premier League,’ Faruk added pointing to the Abahani Limited opener Liton Kumar Das, who has so far been the top scorer in the Dhaka Premier League, with 579 runs.
‘We have tried to give at least one match to players we have in our mind in the home series against Zimbabwe,’ said Faruk hinting at Prime Bank CC batsman Soumya Sarkar.
‘In the final squad, there might be one or two boys, who have experiences of playinga few matches in international spectrum’, Faruk added referring to Kalabagan Cricket Academy’s Sabbir Rahman.
-With New Age input
