Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) granted Tamim Iqbal’s leave from the one-off Test against Afghanistan and tri-nation T20 series involving Afghanistan and Zimbabwe as the opener requested some time-off from the cricket following a poor run of from.
Citing mental fatigue, Tamim earlier had requested BCB before Eid-ul-Azha to allow him to skip the series.
BCB agreed as they have given Shakib Al Hasan a break – following a request from the player – during last month’s ODI series against Sri Lanka.
They had also allowed Shakib time off during the 2017 Test series against South Africa. “Tamim had made the request before Eid and we’ve decided to allow him to skip the series and so he’ll not be playing the Test and the tri-nation T20 Series,” Bangladesh chief selector Minhajul Abedin told on Thursday.
Afghanistan will arrive in Dhaka on August 31 and they will play their first Test against Bangladesh at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram from September 5 to 9.
After the Test, Bangladesh will play the tri-nation T20 Series with Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. Bangladesh will play at least four games in that series.
Tamim has been going through a bad patch for a long time. He scored just 235 runs in eight games. He played in the just concluded ICC World Cup 2019 in England and Wales featuring just one fifty in the marquee event.
After that, he also failed in the Sri Lanka tour where Bangladesh lost all three ODIs of the series. Tamim led the team and returned home with nothing.
In his letter to the BCB, Tamim asked for a break after he had gone through a tough time in the last three months.
Apart from an ordinary World Cup campaign in which he scored only one fifty, and a disastrous ODI series against Sri Lanka, in which he also led Bangladesh, Tamim was subjected to a lot of criticism on social media.
