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Mashrafe Mortaza has been named Bangladesh’s captain for the two Twenty20s against Sri Lanka. He will lead in place of Mushfiqur Rahim, who sustained a finger injury during the second Test.
BCB president Nazmul Hassan spoke to a few directors of the board from Singapore to come to the decision. Tamim Iqbal will continue as vice-captain, and although he was expected to be promoted, Mashrafe’s seniority and experience as captain counted in his favour.
Mashrafe led the team in a single Test match, in 2009, during which he got injured while bowling. After recovering, he captained in seven ODIs in 2010 after which he got injured again, and Shakib Al Hasan took over from 2011.
Both Twenty20s will be held at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, on February 12 and 14. Mushfiqur is expected to return for the three-match ODI series, which begins on February 17, and his injury on his left little finger will be monitored on a daily basis.
After the teams recent test series, which Sri Lanka won 1-0 after the second game was drawn, both captains accused the other of being too defensive denying the chance of an outright result with the mind games likely to spill over into the T20 games.
“We didn’t really declare late,” Sri Lankan captain Angelo Mathews said.
“If they wanted to chase the 467, they could have, but they did not show any intent. They had 98 overs, and we actually could have bowled more than 98 overs, but they didn’t show any intent. We were one-nil up in the series and they had to make a move.
:But we declared yesterday itself, rather than waiting for today. We were being positive and we were going all out for the win.
“We know that we could get them all out if they were going for runs. You could just block and survive on this wicket, but you can’t actually go for big shots because the wicket was a slow one.
“We had different kinds of bowlers – we had Ajantha Mendis, we had Dilruwan Perera and Suranga Lakmal who were bowling well – so if they wanted to go for it, we were up for the challenge.”
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