Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza is in favour of giving a player enough chances before discarding him from the national team. His comment came at the wake of the controversy surrounding Liton Das who is still getting chances despite doing nothing special in his nine ODIs. Liton scored just 124 runs with the highest score of just 36. In the ODI series against Zimbabwe, he made 0, 7 and 17 in three matches. Call was strengthened to drop him as more players are waiting for their chances in the pipeline.
Mashrafe however was stuck to Liton, stating that players need to be gotten enough chances if they want to form a stable team. He cited the example of repeated chopping from the Test team which hindered the way of Bangladesh to be a good Test team despite their elevation to the elite level 15 years back.
“We need to develop a cricket culture,” he said when he was asked about Liton Das’s form. “It’s nothing about Liton Das or any particular player. You have to give enough chances to all players before throwing him away. You can’t do injustice to anyone. Any player can struggle so you need to give him time before dropping him and it’s the right culture which we should develop if we want to find us a good cricketing nation.”
“Why we are struggling as a Test cricket nation?” Mashrafe questioned and kept questioning, “Can you name all the players who played in our Test team? I am sure you even don’t know some of the Test player’s name. They lost in the lane of memory, whereas we have been playing cricket for just 15 years. We did chopping and chopping, we were impatient when it came to develop the team. So we should never do injustice to any player before giving him enough chances to cement his place.”