Two of the pillars of Bangladesh’s white ball cricket over the years, Mahmudullah Riyad and Mushfiqur Rahim, have been overlooked by the national selectors for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia, despite the fact that both these senior players were decent performers for the team in the last T20 World Cup which was played in UAE.
The reason for the exclusion of Mushfiqur Rahim is quite simple, as he announced after the Asia Cup itself that he wanted to focus on the test and ODI cricket for the remaining parts of his career and although he would be open to playing franchise T20 cricket if any opportunity came his way, he wouldn’t be playing T20 international cricket any further.
As far as Mahmudullah is concerned, he was still available for selection for the T20 World Cup, but Sridharan Sriram, the new technical consultant of Bangladesh cricket, decided that the brand of T20 cricket Bangladesh is planning to play in the future, Mahmudullah perhaps doesn’t fit into that.
Mahmudullah and Rahim are missing out on T20 World Cup, but are likely to play in ODI World Cup
Sriram, however, hailed Mahmudullah’s services for Bangladesh in the shortest format of the game and compared him to the former Indian T20 World Cup winning captain MS Dhoni, saying that Mahmudullah did the tough job of batting at no. 6 and 7 for Bangladesh and excelled in his role.
Most T20I runs at No.6 or lower in a calendar year:
409 – Dasun Shanaka🇱🇰 in 2022
264 – Ravi Bopara🏴 in 2014
260 – Mahmudullah Riyad🇧🇩 in 2016
255 – Mahmudullah Riyad🇧🇩 in 2016
255 – David Miller🇿🇦 in 2021Shanaka is comfortably ahead of the next highest.#AsiaCup2022
Advertisement— Kausthub Gudipati (@kaustats) September 11, 2022
But, Sriram also insisted that the time has come for Bangladesh to move on and go with some of the younger players like Mosaddek Hossain, Afif Hossain, and Nurul Hasan who are perhaps a bit more expressive down the order, as compared to Mahmudullah who is a very pragmatic finisher.
Both Mahmudullah and Mushfiqur Rahim are likely to feature for Bangladesh in the ODI World Cup which will take place in India next year, as they are still considered very suitable for 50-over cricket by the Bangladesh selectors.
