Tamim to travel to Dubai and UK to get back injury checked

Tamim Iqbal will be travelling to Dubai and the United Kingdom later this month to have his back injury checked, BCB cricket operations chairman Jalal Yunus has confirmed. Tamim, whose retirement-unretirement drama hogged headlines in Bangladesh over the past few days, has been given a six-week break to recover from the injury. His back injury is now thought to be more of a serious concern, as he is seeking medical advice from overseas.

"Tamim will be going to Dubai. He will then travel to the UK on July 25 or 26. He has two appointments in London. He will update me from there. We have to name the primary squad of 25-26 players [for the Asia Cup and the ODI World Cup] soon, so we need to know his situation. Everyone else will be resting till July 30. Some will go to play abroad. We will restart with a conditioning camp," Yunus told reporters after the third ODI against Afghanistan in Chattogram on Tuesday.

Yunus, however, was non-committal on the captaincy issue - Tamim was the ODI captain before the goings-on over the past few days. "Let him come back first. We will discuss it with him. There's a matter of his fitness. He said he will talk to us after he returns to the country."

Some of the developments around Tamim were connected to BCB president Nazmul Hassan questioning Tamim's professionalism in a newspaper interview on July 5, where Hassan had also said that head coach Chandika Hathurusinghe had been dissatisfied with the lack of clarity around Tamim's injury.

Did Hathurusinghe overstep his mark by going to Hassan?

"I don't think so," Yunus said. "We all have discussions. We talk about a lot of things. In his capacity, he can speak to the president at any point. We discuss things regularly. He informs Shahriar Nafees, the cricket operations manager, and the board president and I are in the loop."

Yunus also said that the BCB is open to discussing Mashrafe Mortaza's role as a team mentor during the 2023 men's ODI World Cup, something Tamim reportedly suggested to prime minister Sheikh Hasina during their meeting on Friday. "The board will decide. He [Mashrafe] is a member of parliament. He is a former captain. He is a good leader. If he comes to us officially, we will discuss it," Yunus said.