Bangladesh’s board now has a leadership vacancy it wasn’t expecting to fill mid-tournament. Nigar Sultana informed the BCB by letter that she won’t continue leading the T20I side once the Asian Games finish, while staying on as ODI captain. No successor has been named, and the board says it won’t even discuss the matter until the Games are over, leaving four years of results and a recent controversy as the only real guide to who takes over next, and how quickly the decision gets made.
A Letter Sent From Japan
Nigar Sultana’s decision reached the Bangladesh Cricket Board in writing, not in a press conference. She sent the letter from Japan on Tuesday, where she is competing at the Asian Games, informing the board she won’t continue as T20I captain once the tournament ends. She isn’t stepping away from leadership entirely; she plans to keep the ODI captaincy.
BCB women’s wing chairman Rafiqul Islam Babu described receiving an email confirming the T20I decision while she remains in charge of the fifty-over side. Board president Tamim Iqbal is understood to have accepted the request. Sultana’s stated reasoning centers on wanting to sharpen her own batting and wicketkeeping rather than continuing to split her focus across both formats.
Her own form in that Asia Cup semi-final didn’t help the optics either. She managed just 56 runs across four innings in the tournament.
Bangladesh T20I captain Nigar Sultana successor
No name has been attached to this yet, officially. Rafiqul Islam Babu said the board would wait until the Asian Games conclude before discussing the matter properly, adding that the timing of her decision, in the middle of the tournament, had left the board in an awkward spot.
That awkwardness has a backstory. Tamim Iqbal had previously acknowledged that complaints about her conduct had been filed and that the board intended to look into them, a thread that had already put her leadership under some scrutiny before this letter arrived. Whoever takes over inherits a role now separated cleanly from the ODI captaincy for the first time in years. For now, the fifty-over side carries on exactly as it was, with Sultana still very much in charge there.
Names Already Being Floated
One outlet has put three names into circulation, though none of them carry any board confirmation yet. Nahida Akter, the current vice-captain and Bangladesh’s highest T20I wicket-taker, is being described as the frontrunner for the job.
Ritu Moni and Shorna Akter are the other two names attached to the speculation, with Ritu Moni’s experience and Shorna Akter’s status as one of the newer generation both cited as reasons they’re in the conversation. The BCB itself has named nobody, and every version of this list should be read as guesswork until the board actually says otherwise. Nahida’s case rests on more than seniority: as the squad’s most experienced spinner, she’s also the most tactically involved player on the field during Sultana’s overs breaks.
Her Numbers Before Stepping Down
Eighty matches, thirty-two wins, forty-seven losses and a single no result sum up Sultana’s four years in the T20I job, a win rate just at 40 percent. That total alone made her the most-capped captain in the format’s Bangladesh history, passing Salma Khatun’s 65 matches.
Bangladesh’s T20 World Cup campaign in England went two from five: beating the Netherlands by six wickets and Pakistan by 23 runs, but losing to Australia by nine wickets after being bowled out for 77, to India by five wickets, and to South Africa by four wickets to exit at the group stage.
The backdrop to her exit wasn’t kind. Bangladesh went out at the group stage of that World Cup, then lost to India by 40 runs in the Asia Cup semi-final, a game remembered as much for her declining to shake Harmanpreet Kaur’s hand at the toss as for the result itself. That moment alone had already put the board’s review of her captaincy in motion.
| Tenure | Matches | Wins | Losses | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 to Sep 2026 (after Asian Games) | 80 | 32 | 47 | 40.00% |
Whatever comes next for the Bangladesh T20I captain Nigar Sultana successor search, it starts with a tenure defined by longevity rather than results.