Bangladesh have appointed Shakib Al Hasan as their new Test captain. Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Nazmul Hassan confirmed on Thursday. The all-rounder was the front-runner to lead the side following the decision of regular Test captain Mominul Haque to step down from captaincy. 

“I feel it is not right for me to do captaincy at the moment because what I feel is that if I can concentrate on my batting, it will be good for me as well as for the team,” Mominul told reporters following his decision to relinquish captaincy on Tuesday. 

Mominul has scored 162 runs across six Tests in 2022 and has failed to score a fifty in his last 15 Test innings. The left-hander has not managed to reach the double-digit score in the last seven innings. In the last series against Sri Lanka, the southpaw scored just 11 runs across three innings. 

Overall, in 17 Tests as captain, Mominul Haque scored 912 runs at an average of 31. 

Meanwhile, for Shakib, this will be his third term as captain of the Bangladesh Test team. The all-rounder was first appointed as the Test skipper in 2009 before being sacked in 2011 following a series loss to Zimbabwe. 

The 35-year-old was later reinstated as the Test captain in 2017 only to be banned by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2019 for the failure to report match-fixing. Under his captaincy, Bangladesh have played a total of 14 Test matches, winning three while losing 11. 

Shakib will begin his captaincy duties in the upcoming Bangladesh tour of the West Indies in June. The BCB also confirmed the appointment of Liton Das as the deputy for Shakib for the two-match Test series in the Caribbean which will be followed by six white-ball series matches comprising three T20Is and three ODIs.