Bangladesh batter Liton Das had been struggling in white-ball formats for a while. His last fifty came in ODIs came in the 2023 World Cup in India which was also a poor tournament by his own standards and in his last five ODIs, he scored just six runs which included three ducks.

Liton was dropped from the Champions Trophy squad which was announced during a press conference at Mirpur's Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium today. Chairman of selection panel, Gazi Ashraf Hossain Lipu, said that although they had kept faith in Liton in the past, this time the batter did not encourage confidence of the selectors.

"I will state two reasons. Liton is out of form and he has been going through a run drought for a while. The manner or pattern of his dismissals are similar. In white-ball format, it's important to take advantage of the Powerplay… in West Indies where we scored 300-plus runs, you can see his strike-rate or that he could not occupy the crease. It brings pressure on his [batting] partner and number three is being exposed. We still kept our confidence on him and gave him chances in a lot of matches. From a position of confidence. In the middle, we didn't keep him in the playing eleven against Sri Lanka [home series in March last year] in a series-deciding game. From a position of confidence…even when a batter is out of form, he can get selected in the team from a position of confidence. From that point of view, he is not in that position [of confidence]," LIpu said.

"Secondly, Soumya Sarkar and [Tanzid] Tamim are doing well as a pair. Since we interact with the captain, they are the ones who are going to start the innings. In fact, there is no place for him in the first eleven. So we felt that Liton's class is not under question, neither is his talent. But when someone is going through a form crisis such as this, to bring him out of that crisis, if we can work with him at one time, we can bring him to international cricket more strongly," the chief selector added.

Lipu also felt that opposition analysts have figured Liton's problems acutely and been very successful with their plans against the Bangladesh batter.

"We have our analysts and experts. The opposition analysts are becoming too successful with their plans against Liton Das. To break that [pattern], it's a good time. Taking Liton out of the side doesn't mean he is out of the national team. We have many matches ahead and our experts will definitely get a chance to work with Liton to make his weak areas stronger," he divulged.

Liton had been going through a rough patch since the 2023 ODI World Cup and it appears that performances in the West Indies ODIs finally broke the camel's back and led to his exclusion from the Champions Trophy, starting on February 19.