Bangladesh postpone Zimbabwe series
Bangladesh Cricket President, Nazmul Hassan has decided to postpone their series against Zimbabwe that was due in January as they want the players to prepare for the upcoming T20 World Cup and the Asia Cup.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) hasn’t rescheduled the tour as of now. All that is known is the fact that the T20 World Cup is on the head and that’s what the team needs to prepare for.
He said, “It is necessary for us to prepare for the Asia Cup T20 and the World T20 which are two important tournaments, many of our T20 players aren't in the T20 squad so if we play Test cricket at that time, they won't be able to prepare.”
The fixtures were set for a two-Test series in January which was earlier to be a three-Test series, again changed by the BCB due to the same reason. The BCB hasn’t given any concrete schedules for the time period between the end of the BPL and the start of the Asia Cup. Bangladesh will be the hosts to the Asia Cup.
There are no series scheduled for Bangladesh after the World T20 and the BCB president added that the board would look forward to fix the series at that time.
The two Test match series was a part of a full tour of Zimbabwe to Bangladesh. But, when Australia postponed their Test series, the BCB thought to start off with the ODIs and T20s against Zimbabwe in November rather than January. They won the three-match ODI series with a clean sweep of 3-0, however, the T20 trophy was shared.
Bangladesh play the qualifiers for the World T20 and will be up against Irelands the Netherlands and the first-time playing team Oman in Group A of the qualifiers. They will enter the deadly group which includes India, Australia, Pakistan and New Zealand if they win the qualifiers.
The two teams which qualify from the qualifiers will face the other 8 teams in the Super 10 stage of the T20 World Cup. The World T20 starts on 11th March next year.