Mushfiqur Rahim Set To Miss West Indies Tour Due To Hajj Pilgrimage: Report

Dhaka: Veteran Bangladesh wicketkeeper-batter Mushfiqur Rahim is all set to miss the tour of the West Indies due to undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage, said a report on Saturday. The report added that with the religious pilgrimage scheduled to happen in July, Rahim will travel to Saudi Arabia on June 22.

“He informed us before the Sri Lanka series that he wants to perform Hajj this year. When he got confirmation, he gave us a letter that he wanted to leave. We have granted him the time. We had an initial thought that he might be available for part of the tour but he is off for the whole tour,” Jalal Yunus, BCB’s cricket operations chairman, was quoted as saying in the report by ESPNCricinfo.

With Rahim unavailable for the entirety of the West Indies tour, it serves as a big blow for Bangladesh which is already dealing with a host of injury issues. Taskin Ahmed is recovering from a shoulder injury while Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Shoriful Islam, and Nayeem Hasan are dealing with hand injuries.

Recently, on May 18, Rahim, who is Bangladesh’s most-capped Test cricketer, became the first player from his country to score more than 5000 runs in the longest format of the game en route to 105 on day three of the drawn first Test against Sri Lanka in Chattogram.

After the Tests against Sri Lanka are over, the report further said that Bangladesh is likely to travel to the West Indies on June 5 through the squads for the same haven’t been announced yet. The tour of the Caribbean will comprise two Tests in Antigua and St Lucia, starting from June 16.

The T20Is is from July 2 to 6 in Dominica and St Lucia while the ODIs are from July 10 to 16 in Dominica. Only the Test series is part of the World Test Championship; the ODIs are not part of the Super League.