Sports Desk:

Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hasan said on Thursday they will speak to one-day international skipper Mashrafee bin Murtaza before moving ahead with their plan of holding a one-off one-day international match against Zimbabwe to give him a grand farewell.

‘We are yet to talk with him over the matter. Let him return to Dhaka. We will sit to discuss about this issue after his arrival,’ Nazmul Hasan told reporters during a programme in Mirpur.

Mashrafee was expected to retire after the World Cup in UK but did not make his plan clear despite a dip in his form during the tournament, where he claimed just one wicket in eight matches.

Mashrafee missed the subsequent series in Sri Lanka for injury and was facing a long absence from international cricket with Bangladesh’s next ODIs schedule in June 2020, and that too away from home in Ireland.

Bangladesh are not scheduled to play any ODI at home until December next year, when Sri Lanka will arrive to reciprocate their recent three-match series.

It puts Mashrafee at risk of missing out on a chance to bid international cricket bye formally before the home crowd as BCB officials are unsure if he can maintain his fitness such a long period.

Now a fulltime politician and a member of Jatiya Sangsad, Mashrafee got a few other commitments, which might make him struggling to maintain his fitness for such a long period, feared the BCB officials.

Apparently left embarrassed by Mashrafee’s indecision, the BCB contemplated the idea of holding a one-off ODI against Zimbabwe, which would make a happy ending to his long, illustrious career.

Zimbabwe cricket team will be visiting Dhaka next month to play a tri-nation Twenty20 tournament between September 13 and 24. Bangladesh and Afghanistan are the two other teams in the tournament.

The BCB is confident it can convince Zimbabwe for playing the ODI though opinion is divided about hosting the match as arranging such game will cost the board an estimated Tk 60 lakh.

But several officials said they are in favour of holding the match to give Mashrafee the honour that he deserved.

BCB director Lokman Hossain Bhuiyan, who attended several meetings regarding the matter, said that they have made the decision of holding such match some days ago if Mashrafee agreed.

‘Till now what I know, we have plan of arranging the match,’ Lokman told New Age.

‘We have plan of giving him a grand farewell for his great contributions to our cricket,’ he added.

If arranged, possibly sometime in September, the game will solve BCB’s contractual problem as well.

Mashrafee is currently under contract with BCB until December, but some officials are against the idea of giving him a fresh contract next year for handful of ODIs, as he is unavailable for other formats.

BCB director Lokman said they were yet to discuss about Mashrafee’s contract.

Mashrafee currently draws an approximately Tk five lakh a month from BCB as his salary.