Liton Das out of Australia series, Bangladesh extends Ashwell Prince’s tenure to T20 World Cup

Bangladesh will now be without the services of its three-star players in the upcoming T20I series against Australia starting August 02 at Shere Bangla Stadium in Dahaka. After the injury to Tamim Iqbal and Mushfiqur Rahim being unable to join the Bio-Bubble due to July 20 deadline, Liton Das has been ruled out of the series as well due to personal family matters. 

"Liton is out of the series. He has to attend to a family matter, for which we can't really do anything. We initially had a 20-man squad but after Tamim Iqbal and Mushfiqur Rahim had to pull out, Liton is also not in the squad,” Akram Khan, head of Cricket Operations of the Bangladesh Cricket Board said. “We are down to 17 players. The quarantine in Dhaka started on July 20, so we can only have the players who are travelling back from Zimbabwe on July 28,” Khan added. 

Key Bangladesh players such as Shakib Al Hasan, Soumya Sarkar and Mustafizur Rahman Hasan are also suffering from some sort of injury or the other. While Sarkar is nursing a groin niggle, Shakib has been managing a long term groin injury on the entire tour of Zimbabwe and knee injury forced Mustafiz to play only two games on the tour. 

Another big development took place in Bangladesh cricket when BCB decided to extend batting consultant South Africa’s Ashwell Prince’s contract to the T20 World Cup which was initially signed only for the Zimbabwe tour.  

"Since it will be hard to get a coach before the T20 World Cup, we took a bit of feedback and it has been generally positive. I think some of our batsmen did really well in Zimbabwe. Some of the players told us that they have confidence in him. They are satisfied with his work,” Akram said while announcing the extension of Prince’s contract. 

"So we plan to go ahead with him. We can confirm that he is with us till the T20 World Cup. We will take on a decision on his further involvement (after the World Cup) over the course of the next week," he further added. 

Prince was pulled into Bangladesh’s support staff team along with Sri Lankan Rangana Herath who was appointed the team’s spin bowling consultant till the T20 World Cup in October-November this year. 

Bangladesh T20I squad for Australia series

Mahmudullah (capt), Shakib Al Hasan, Liton Das, Nurul Hasan (wk), Taskin Ahmed, Shoriful Islam, Taijul Islam, Mohammad Naim, Mohammad Saifuddin, Mustafizur Rahman, Afif Hossain, Rubel Hossain, Mohammad Mithun, Mosaddek Hossain, Soumya Sarkar, Shamim Hossain, Nasum Ahmed, Mahedi Hasan