'This year's BPL will be crucial'

BPL (Bangladesh Premier League) fever has already taken a grip on the cricketing fraternity, with players and officials already taking to the field to being their preparations from the T20 extravaganza, which kicks off from January 5.

Former national captain Minhajul Abedin was also not immune as he has already started his job as manager of the Chittagong Vikings. However, Minhajul assured yesterday that he would not forget his role as chief selector, saying that he would closely follow the cricketers' performances through the tournament.

"We are going to face big challenges in 2019 as we have some important series. We will play three Tests in New Zealand, so it will be a big challenge. We have also World Cup this year, so we will look into the players' attitude and approach although it's a T20 tournament," Minhajul told reporters at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday.

"As the next T20 World Cup will be held in 2020, we have to start our preparation from here and in this context this year's BPL is very important to us. We cannot compare T20 cricket to Test cricket but we want to see many things during this tournament, especially attitude and approach," he added.

This BPL will be especially important for those players who are now out-of-favour and everybody will be looking the likes of Sabbir Rahman and how they take the opportunity to draw the selectors' attention ahead of the World Cup.

Minhajul however made clear that in Sabbir's case, performance alone would not be enough as they would also be monitoring his behaviour.

"We have around 40 cricketers in the pool and we will observe everybody's performance. Taskin [Ahmed] is returning from a long injury lay-off. Sabbir returned from suspension and he needs to focus more on himself rather than performances. He has to monitor his discipline," opined Minhajul.

With the 2020 World T20 in mind, Minhajul said they would also look into the performances of some new talents. "It will be challenging to play the qualifying for the 2020 World T20 but it can help us to prepare ourselves and I am very confident of playing in the tournament proper," he said.