Tamim Iqbal retires from T20Is

Tamim Iqbal announced retirement from T20 internationals early today. 

The Bangladesh ODI captain, in a short Facebook post, said, "Consider me retired from T20 Internationals from today. Thank you all."

The announcement came when Bangladesh won the third and final ODI against West Indies by four wickets and completed a clean sweep over the hosts at Guyana.

Over time, speculation has increased as the experienced left-handed opener stayed away from T20 internationals for various reasons over the past two years. 

After Bangladesh played their second T20I match against the West Indies on Sunday, Tamim's verified page had a post that reads, 'T20 International', followed by three hand-waving emojis at the end of the post, which means he's saying goodbye.

The post, however, did not stay for long and got deleted after a while. 

But by then the screenshot of the post had gone viral on social media. 

Many people then assumed that the ODI captain had retired from T20Is or was going to retire soon.

Tamim took a leave of absence from this format for six months last January, which is not over yet. 

Tamim played his last international T20I match against Zimbabwe on March 9, 2020, in Mirpur.

Since then, Bangladesh has played several series including the T20 World Cup. 

Tamim was not part of any of the teams and requested to not be considered for selection for the World Cup as he felt the other openers deserved to keep their spots as the team was doing well leading into the T20 World Cup. 

Sometimes due to injury and sometimes due to family reasons, the 33-year-old has kept himself away from this format. 

For Bangladesh, Tamim has scored 1,601 runs at an average of 24.75 with a century and six half-centuries in 64 T20Is and is the third-highest run-scorer for Bangladesh in this format. 

He is the only batter in Bangladesh to have a century in the International Twenty20s.