Bangladesh Test captain Mominul Haque has said he is reluctant to continue in the role.
He made the revelation after attending a meeting with the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hasan on Tuesday evening, in remarks to the media.
"I'm not willing to continue as the role of the Bangladesh Test captain. I've told it to the BCB president. Now the board will decide who they offer the role," Mominul said.
“I think I could not inspire the team to do well and could not contribute well to the team. At this stage, I think it is best for me to give up the captaincy and focus on my batting. I have said all these to the BCB president,” Mominul added.
BCB had recently asked Mominul to 'have a think' about whether he wants to continue as the captain of the Bangladesh Test team.
“He needs to decide what is the best for him,” Jalal Yunus, the chairman of the cricket operation department of BCB, told the media recently. “When you don’t get runs as a captain and batter, the pressure gets heavier.”
However, Russell Domingo, the head coach of the national team, had said that he would like to rely on Mominul’s captaincy more. But he agreed that Mominul has been out of form for a while, and he has to work harder to get his old form back.
READ: Cricketer Mominul on verge of losing captaincy
Mominul got only one fifty in his last 15 Test innings; remarkably, in 12 of those innings, he failed to reach 10 runs. It is an abysmal run of form for someone who had come to be known as the dependable one in the Test batting line up.
Bangladesh played a total of 17 Tests under the captaincy of Mominul and won only three of them. Bangladesh lost 12 of the other matches with only two draws.
Undoubtedly the high point of his leadership was the triumph against world Test champions New Zealand in Mt Maunganui earlier this year, en route to a creditable drawn series away from home.
But the diminutive left-handed batsman always gave the impression that he was struggling to impose himself or his vision, if he had one, on the way the team went about its business on the field. That shouldn't take away from the fact that he always had a tough job on his hands.
After all, not only was he hamstrung by limited resources at his disposal - he also had to strike a delicate balance handling the senior players - put bluntly, the vaunted Big 5 and some of their egos - he had to lead, most of them former captains in some format themselves.
Bangladesh failed to win any match in the recently-concluded two-match Test series against Sri Lanka at home. They ended the first match in a draw in Chattogram and in the second match, they endured a 10-wicket defeat in Dhaka.
This series was a part of the ongoing cycle of the ICC World Test Championship. After this recent failure, Mominul’s captaincy came under scrutiny once again.
After the series against Sri Lanka, BCB president Nazmul Hasan had a meeting with Mominul. It was not clear what they have discussed in that meeting. But the inside sources of BCB said that the meeting was about the future of Mominul as Bangladesh’s Test captain.
Bangladesh’s next international assignment is in the West Indies. The board has already announced the squads for this tour. Mominul is named the captain of the Test team.
Now, after Mominul cleared the air about his captaincy, the onus is on the board to appoint a new captain ahead of the West Indies tour. The board is yet to say anything about the Test captain till Tuesday evening.
Some media reports suggested that the allrounder Shakib Al Hasan might be appointed as the next Test captain of Bangladesh. However, neither the BCB nor Shakib Al Hasan has said anything about it.
Bangladesh team is scheduled to play a two-match Test, three-match ODI and three-match T20I series in West Indies.