No desire to retire from Test cricket: Shakib Al Hasan

Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has cleared the air himself by stating that he harbours no desire to retire from Test cricket any time soon. He had requested Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) to grant a six-month break from the longest format of the game and the board obliging to it did not pick him in the squad for South Africa Tests. However, he will continue playing in limited-overs format in the meantime.

Shakib has played so much cricket in recent times and deserved a break but it is hard to imagine Bangladesh Test team without him. He will be badly missed in South Africa as he was the one in New Zealand who scored a scintillating double hundred. He is immensely experienced and knows how to perform under pressure. The selectors have replaced Shakib by Mahmudullah Riyad, another all-rounder, but not of his stature.

Test will be the last format I retire from

Shakib cleared all the rumours of retiring from Test cricket and said that retiring from the format is the last thing on his list. “My target is to retire from Test cricket at the very end after I have retired from T20 and ODIs,” he said in the press conference. He also felt that he needed to take a breather and refresh himself mentally.

“I can play If I want to…but what do you guys want? That I play for another five to seven years or one to two years. I I keep playing like this –maybe I won’t be able to play behind one or two years. However long I play for…I want to play well and that is my target,” he added.

The all-rounder also cleared why he took the break from Test cricket and not the limited-overs format. “If you take a break from Test series you get a month off. If you take a break from a T20 series you get three days break and for an ODI series, it’s only seven days. I needed a bigger break so I opted for the Test format,” he concluded.