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Najmul Hossain Shanto said that he was still enjoying the captaincy but admitted that his current poor form with the bat was affecting his team.

He also said that the performance has never been an issue with his reported intention to quit the captaincy. 

Shanto-led side was blown away by South Africa as they lost by an innings and 273 runs in the second Test at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram on Thursday.

The southpaw has been struggling with the bat, particularly in Tests, for almost a year now. He has now scored only one fifty in his 17 previous innings at an average of 20.05. 

In the series against South Africa, he has scored 7, 23, 9, and 36 in four innings. 

‘As I bat at the top, my crucial responsibility is to score, which has not been happening. I got out between 20 and 40 for a number of innings,’ said Shanto after the end of the second Test. 

‘I got out after being set, and that hampers the team. I have to concentrate on these things. I think my batting is very important.’ 

The Bangladesh captain said that they needed a team effort to do better. 

‘There were individual performances. When Mominul bhai [Mominul Haque] scored a hundred [in India], we couldn’t support him. When Shadman [Islam] scored 90 [in Pakistan], he did it alone from one end,’ Shanto lamented.

‘In Pakistan, we won, but the top order didn’t click. It’s important to perform as a team, especially the top order’, he added. 

There was a lot of discussion around Shanto after some reports mentioned that he wanted to quit the captaincy. 

BCB president Faruque Ahmed earlier confirmed Shanto’s intention but said that a final outcome would come once he sat down with him. 

Shanto, too, didn’t want to talk about it before the meeting with the BCB boss, but he didn’t believe that his batting created pressure on his captaincy. 

 ‘I’ve always said that I enjoy the captaincy. I always enjoy it. I’ve enjoyed it for the last couple of series. Not once did it feel like pressure.’ 

So it was clear that Shanto wanted to quit the captaincy for an issue that was not related to his performance. 

But Shanto admitted that the off-field incidents — including the talk about his captaincy that gripped Bangladesh cricket for the last few months — might have affected the team.

However, he added that this was not an excuse to justify such performances.

‘As players, we have to adapt with those. I know this is tough. But still, [the performance] shouldn’t have been this bad’, he said. 

Shanto also believed that the handling of the off-field issues would change in the future. 

‘Insha’allah, from now on it won’t happen. I believe that these things will be sorted out through a system nicely.’