Sports Desk:

Interim one-day international skipper Tamim Iqbal on Monday said that he was looking forward to relish the added responsibility on his shoulder during the three-match series against Sri Lanka, starting on July 26 in Colombo.

Tamim is set to become the 13th cricketer to lead Bangladesh in ODIs after regular skipper Mashrafee bin Murtaza sustained a hamstring injury at the eleventh hour of the tour and was ruled out for a month.

The 30-year old had earlier led Bangladesh in a Test match against New Zealand in 2017 but the decision to make him captain for a whole series came abruptly and Tamim said he was looking to lead the Tigers by setting example with his performances.

‘This thing was given to me by the cricket board and I need to take that as a challenge,’ Tamim told reporters in Colombo in a joint press-conference.

‘I need to make sure my team responds to me well. I need to lead by example with my performances. So I am looking forward to it. It’s a new challenge and I am sure I am going to enjoy it. Then I will see what happens after the series.

‘I think that the squad we have are very capable. And I think playing Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka will be difficult. But we have done well when we played here last time and I hope we will continue the momentum and do produce some good cricket for Bangladesh,’ he added.

Tamim had a disappointing campaign in the recent-concluded ICC World Cup, where he could score only 235 runs in eight innings and Bangladesh suffered a lot due to his lack of impactful innings at the top.

Bangladesh, who had a washed-out match against Sri Lanka, won three matches to finish eighth in the point-table but Tamim defended his team’s performance in the tournament.

‘I thought we had a pretty decent World Cup. There were few games that we should have won. If you see the points table, you will probably see we had a very bad World Cup. We, the cricketers also felt that we could have done more. But we played some good cricket,’ he said.

‘But we are in a stage in Bangladesh playing good cricket doesn’t matter for us anymore. Winning games is more important than anything else,’ he added.

Ace all-rounder Sakib al Hasan, who starred in almost all of Bangladesh’s wins in England, was not available for the tour personal reasons.

Tamim, however, refused to dwell too much about his absence and backed the players in the squad to perform well in the series.

‘As I told you the guys who were picked in the 15 [14] are very capable. I really don’t like to talk who is not in the team right at the moment. I know he [Sakib] is special and has done fantastically well for Bangladesh but he is not touring at this tour,’ he said.

‘So let’s not talk about him as we have another 15 [14] players to look after. And I think they are very capable. I think that whoever plays the first one day match, they need to cash in the opportunity,’ he added.