Bangladesh‘s ODI and legendary opening batsman Tamim Iqbal has announced his shock retirement from international cricket, leaving Bangladesh in a bit of a pickle with three months to go for World Cup 2023.
A big part of Bangladesh’s success in recent years, not least in the ODI Super League where Bangladesh finished 3rd on the table and earned a direct qualification for World Cup 2023, Tamim Iqbal, the current ODI skipper, announced his retirement on Thursday, a day after his team lost the first of the three ODIs against Afghanistan.
It is rumored that Tamim Iqbal, who was already struggling for form, had had a tussle with the board and wasn’t happy with some things said by some officials.
Tamim Iqbal had retired from T20Is last year
The 34-year-old Tamim Iqbal called for an urgent press conference on Thursday morning in Chattogram and announced his retirement from the ODIs and Tests effective immediately, bringing curtains to a 16-year international career. The left-hander got emotional in the press conference and shed some tears as he bid adieu to international cricket.
The BCB has not named the next ODI captain yet, for there are 2 more ODIs remaining in the series against Afghanistan. Shakib Al Hasan leads the team in the T20I format, while Litton Das is the Test captain. It is likely that one of these two will take over the captaincy duties for the time being.
Tamim began his international career in 2007. He hit a famous fifty that downed India in the 2007 ODI World Cup in West Indies. He finishes with the most ODI runs (8313) and hundreds (14) for Bangladesh and is the third-highest run-scorer among current cricketers behind Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
In Tests, Tamim scored 5134 runs – the second-highest for Bangladesh – at an average of 38.89, with 10 centuries in 70 matches. As ODI captain, Tamim has a marginally higher win percentage than Mashrafe Mortaza. He won 21 out of 37 ODIs as captain and led Bangladesh recently to a third-place finish in the ODI Super League.
