Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) selection panel chairman Minhajul Abedin Nannu said Friday that they have prepared a 30-member Bangladesh preliminary squad keeping out Nasir Hossain for the next two back-to-back series against Afghanistan and the West Indies.

Nannu also said that they have prepared a 22-man High Performance (HP) squad, which will also be submitted with the national squad tomorrow (Saturday) to the board.

Therefore, the board will soon announce both two squads after getting the approval of the board president.

“Tomorrow we’ll submit our preliminary squad for the next two series against Afghanistan and West Indies. We’re prepared a 30-member squad for those series,” said Minhajul Abedin Nannu.

“Along with that, we’ve considered some players for the Bangladesh ‘A’ Team. We’ll attach them with HP squad. For HP, we’ll give a 22-man squad. We’ll give 6-8 players for the A team. Tomorrow we’ll finalise it,” Minhajul told media at his residence in the capital yesterday.

“Those who will be remained after flying to West Indies will be considered for the Bangladesh ‘A’ team,” he added.

The selection panel chairman said that they have formed a combined team of HP and A team, the team who will play the next home series against Sri Lanka ‘A’ Team in June.

“As we have first Afghanistan series, so we are working on this series. Thereby, we’ve a long tour in West Indies, where we have two Tests, three ODIs as many as T20Is. In that sense, the series will be a challenging series for us. In that aspect, we have so many back-to-back games,” he said.

“With the pace of the national team, a hectic schedule for the Bangladesh A team is being begun since June. We’ve attached ‘A’ Team to HP team and formed a combined team, who will play the home series against Sri Lanka A team,” he continued.

Considering the seriousness of the Nasir Hossain injury, they prepared the preliminary squad as Nannu said, adding that he needed six months or more to be fully healed from his injury.  

“We’re getting an update of all the injured players tomorrow. We believe we’ll get all fit and sound before the conditioning camp (May 13). So far we get to know that all are well and fit sans Nasir Hossain, who has a serious injury. Apart from that, we did not get any update of Taskin Ahmed,” the former captain said.

“Nasir’s matter is difficult as he has a matter of operation. He has needed more than six months to comeback from his injury being fully healed. In that sense, Nasir is not being kept in the squad. We are scheduled to get Taskin’s injury update today. We’ll think about him after getting his update,” he said of Nasir and Taskin.              

Asked if they select the rest of the contract players of the rookie category, Minhajul said that they will finalise the rest of the players’ name within tomorrow.

“We’re yet to ready it completely. Hopefully we’ll prepare it within today or tomorrow and disclose it before May 7,” he said.

“Liton Das is our automatic choice. The rest of the two players will be finalised within two days,” he also said.

“We are in discussion yet. As there is a system of contract, we didn’t tell about it at this moment. We’ll follow the guideline set by the cricket operation. And the decision will be taken by the board,” he added.  

Nannu said that Mario Villavarayan will conduct the conditioning camp as per the guideline of the Courtney Walsh what he had given us during the last series.  

“Our work is to give a squad. The team management will fix the timing of the practice. But Courtney Walsh gave us a guideline before the last series. As per that guideline, we’ll start our practice,” he said.

“We’ve already discussed with the captains. Before the final decision, it is always happened that the final squad has been fixed after discussing with all the captains, selectors, coaches and team management. There is no need to discuss with the coach in case of the preliminary squad. But before a series, a discussion is held with the head coach,” he also said.

Conditioning camp will be started totally under the supervision of the Mario Villavarayen. He will conduct the camp,” he added.