The Bangladesh Cricket Board on Monday (August 22) included left handed opener Mohammad Naim in their 16-member squad for the upcoming Asia Cup, scheduled in UAE from September 27.Naim, who was part of the Bangladesh A team during the recent tour of the West Indies, will join the team in Dubai on Tuesday. The 23-year-old left-hander has been capped 34 times for Bangladesh in T20 internationals. Meanwhile, pacer Hasan Mahmud and wicketkeeper Nurul Hasan Sohan, who were originally selected in the squad, will both miss the Asia Cup through injury.
Mahmud suffered a ligament damage to his right ankle during training on August 20 and is sidelined for at least three weeks. Sohan underwent a surgery on his left index finger in Singapore two weeks ago and needs more time to recover. The Bangladeshi team will leave for the UAE from Dhaka on Tuesday, 23rd August.Bangladesh are heading to the upcoming continental tournament following back-to-back series defeats against Zimbabwe across T20Is and ODIs, and the newly appointed T20I skipper, Shakib Al Hasan, has dismissed the talk of making it to the finals. He stated that the team is looking at making it to the knockout stages of the tournament and wants to keep the targets in the dressing room rather than discussing it in the media. “It is difficult for us [to think about making the Asia Cup final]. If we can show a bit of improvement from what we have done in the last year-and-a-half, it would be an achievement. We should make it to the Super 4s, but I feel that if we can’t achieve targets that we set before a tournament, you will tell us that we talk big but can’t achieve targets. Let us keep our targets in the dressing room. I don’t want to discuss it here,” Shakib said in his first press interaction since becoming T20I captain.
