Soumya's exclusion from central contract a mistake: BCB chief selector
BCB’s chief selector Minhajul Abedin confirmed it to The Business Standard (TBS) that Soumya was not left out of the central contract and it was an honest mistake that his name was excluded.
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) had announced the name of the 16 players included in their latest central contract on Sunday. Expectedly, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Shakib Al Hasan were not included. Mashrafe had withdrawn himself from the contract and Shakib was under a ban from the International Cricket Council (ICC).
But another player was also missing from the lot, Soumya Sarkar. The left-handed batsman has been a regular in the limited-over formats for Bangladesh in the last five years and had scored a fifty in the last ODI he had played for Bangladesh. It was a surprise to many that he was left out. But BCB's chief selector Minhajul Abedin confirmed it to The Business Standard (TBS) that Soumya was not left out of the central contract and it was an honest mistake that his name was excluded.
"We will include Soumya. We will send a press release regarding this soon," Minhajul told TBS.
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He further added, "We cut it down from 24 players and that is when we mistakenly excluded him. This is not a technical issue. We have included him in the white-ball contract."
This means that now there are 17 players in the central contract including Soumya. Apart from Mashrafe and Shakib, the ones dropped are Rubel Hossain, Imrul Kayes, Abu Hider Rony. Mahmudullah Riyad has also been cut off from the red-ball contract whereas Taijul Islam has been handed contracts in both red-ball and white-ball.
Naim Sheikh, Afif Hossain, Mohammad Mithun, Ebadot Hossain and Nazmul Hossain Shanto are the new ones included in the central contract. Among them, Naim and Afif are in the 'D' category. The categories of the other players have not been disclosed yet.
