Sports Desk:

Former Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah is set to retire from T20Is at the end of their three-match series against India.

He revealed the decision during a pre-match press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. The second match of the series will be held today.

That means the last match of the series, which will be held in Hyderabad on October 12, will be his last outing in this format. He confirmed that the decision was pre-planned.

‘I am retiring from T20I cricket after the last game of this series. I was pre-decided before coming here,’ he told the reporters.

‘I had a chat with my family. I spoke to the coach [Chandika Hathurusingha], captain [Najmul Hossain Shanto], chief selector [Gazi Ashraf Hossain], and the board president [Faruque Ahmed] as well. I think it is the right time to move on from this format for me and the team.’

Mahmudullah is the second senior Bangladesh cricketer to announce his retirement in recent times, following Shakib Al Hasan, who previously revealed that he had played his final T20I and wished to retire from the Test against South Africa in Mirpur later this month.

The 39-year-old Mahmudullah has already retired from Test cricket, but he plans to continue in the ODI format.

‘Especially with the World Cup coming up in less than two years. I will concentrate on the one-day game’, he added.

He was dropped from the T20 squad following the 2022 Asia Cup, only to return almost two years later in 2024.

Mahmudullah has so far played 139 matches in the shortest format of the game, that is most by any Bangladeshi, and currently he sits at the fourth position overall.

He has also captained the Tigers in 43 matches, the highest by any Bangladeshi, including eight in the ICC T20 World Cup in 2021.

A handy all-rounder dubbed the ‘finisher’ for his role in the batting, Mahmudullah is one of the just two batters to have scored more than 2,000 runs in T20Is for the country.

He has scored 2,395 runs at an average of 23.48 and a strike rate of 117.74. Only Shakib (2,551) is ahead of him in terms of runs scored.

But as most of the Bangladeshi batters are known for their struggle with the pace of the T20s, Mahmudullah is no different.

He, in fact, has the lowest strike rate of the 35 batters who have scored more than 2,000 runs.

Mahmudullah began his career as a middle-order batter before being assigned the role of the finisher.  He batted at number five against India in the first match of the series against India.

‘Back in 2016, there was a T20 World Cup in India’, Mahmudullah recalled his transformation as a finisher. ‘Before that, we had a training camp in Khulna. I changed my batting approach from that camp.

‘I had to bat at No. 6 or 7, so I decided to change my approach and style. It was the team’s finisher role. It was a very tricky place to bat. Not always you could finish the game. People would usually highlight the ones you didn’t finish, rather than the ones you were there for. But it is part and parcel of this game.’

Mahmudullah, who has the unwanted record of being part of the most lost matches (87) by any player, however, played some memorable innings for Bangladesh.

In that chart, the top would be against Sri Lanka in the 2018 Nidahas Trophy when he hit an 18-ball 43 to chase down 159 when Bangladesh needed 12 from the last four balls.

He’s also known for his infamous role in not finishing the game against India in Bengaluru in the 2016 World Cup, when Bangladesh needed 2 off 3 but Mushfiqur Rahim and he got out in consecutive deliveries.

His career is now poised to come to an end with the same opposition.