Bangladesh's interim ODI skipper faced a test before the second ODI against Afghanistan. Appearing before the media within half an hour of him getting appointed captain officially for the remainder of ODI series against Afghanistan, Das faced a few tough questions.
Das has not been named as the permanent ODI skipper after Tamim Iqbal's shock retirement form international cricket. In the press conference, Das made it clear that he would not entertain questions regarding Iqbal's retirement and he would rather talk about the second ODI against the Afghan side.
"Bhai(brother) I came here to talk about tomorrow. If you ask questions regarding Tamim here, then the board president or the coach is more appropriate than me and I think I should leave," Litton told reporters at one point of the press conference which indicated that they have gotten over the shock and are now trying to look forward without their most successful batter across formats.
"I came to know about it (his retirement) at 1 in the afternoon. Certainly I have played with him for a long time and no one realized that he would take such a decision but the decision is made by the elder brother and all the member of the team respects his decision and I feel everyone should do the same," he said.
"It is difficult to say whether we will miss him because today I am here tomorrow I might not be here due to injury and no one will miss me because newcomers will come into the side and this is the process. If he was around it could or could not be but as he is not available anymore I don't think there is no need to talk with me about the topic anymore. I don't think there is any point looking at something that is gone rather we need to focus on what we can do in future and bring good for the country and we need to try and do that," he further added.
Das denied that he was feeling the heat due to captaincy role. The 28-year-old emphasised on the need of threat posed by Afghan spinners.
"We know their major strength is spin and we need to make sure we don't lose too many wickets because in that case we will be in the game," he said.
"In the last game the first 10 overs were challenging but we did well and I don't think we have any complain regarding it. The thing that we miss is that our batsmen make mistakes when it comes to execution. We did not got out against good balls. At times you will get out against scoring deliveries and we need try to minimize our mistakes," he said.
"It is not a fact that we need to score 300 always, if it is 300 or 350 runs wicket and we are set, it will happen but if the wicket demands 250, in that case we should try to get that," he added.
Afghanistan won the first ODI by 17 runs by Duckworth Lewis Stern (DLS) method in the rain-affected encounter at Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, Chattogram.
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