DHA­KA, Bangladesh – Ja­son Mo­hammed hopes to use his un­ex­pect­ed call-up for the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries here start­ing next week, to force his way back in­to the West In­dies side per­ma­nent­ly.

Be­fore his se­lec­tion for the three-match se­ries, the 34-year-old right-han­der had not fea­tured for the Caribbean side in 2-½ years, but now sees light at the end of the tun­nel for his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

Mo­hammed said he wel­comed the huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ing the ODI squad, es­pe­cial­ly in the cir­cum­stances with so many in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers in­clud­ed.

“I’ve been out for two years now and ob­vi­ous­ly I have a great role in lead­ing the team but per­son­al­ly I look for­ward to the chal­lenge,” Mo­hammed said.

“It’s a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to have a good se­ries and re­al­ly put my hands up for when the full-strength team is back so I can re­al­ly get my place back in that team.

“With the World Cup com­ing up, it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for all of us here to try and put our hands up to get in­to the orig­i­nal team when the full squad is back.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, Mo­hammed’s last two ODIs came against Bangladesh in the Caribbean, when he man­aged on­ly 22 runs in the se­ries.

The fail­ures came against the back­drop of a run of low scores and he was sub­se­quent­ly dropped af­ter av­er­ag­ing just eight from the last six match­es of his 28-game ca­reer.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed said the re­call, af­ter 10 play­ers de­clined se­lec­tion for the tour due to con­cerns over the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion here, was all the in­spi­ra­tion he need­ed to im­press se­lec­tors again.

“I’ve been out of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et a cou­ple of years now so ob­vi­ous­ly to mo­ti­vate my­self is not go­ing to be dif­fi­cult be­cause here is where I want to be, play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et,” he point­ed out.

“As I said be­fore, it’s a huge role I have to fill be­ing the leader of the Caribbean team but it’s some­thing that I’m ac­cus­tomed to do­ing – cap­tain­ing and play­ing.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly it’s a lot dif­fer­ent here be­cause it’s in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et but there’s no added pres­sure be­cause of that.”

Mo­hammed will have a huge chal­lenge on his hands, with the Windies up against a strong Bangladesh side known to be a for­mi­da­ble unit on home soil.

Fur­ther, the Trinida­di­an will lead a squad with nine debu­tants, and will now be with­out leg-spin­ning all-rounder Hay­den Walsh who test­ed pos­i­tive on Thurs­day for COVID-19.

But Mo­hammed said he rel­ished the chal­lenge while stress­ing that his key role will be pro­vid­ing guid­ance for the younger play­ers.

“There are not a lot of se­nior guys around, there are a lot of young faces in the team and a lot of guys will be mak­ing their de­buts,” he not­ed.

“My job will be to try and make them as re­laxed and calm [as pos­si­ble], try and guide them in the right di­rec­tion, es­pe­cial­ly on the field [and with] the young bowlers.

“There’s not much you can re­al­ly do at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. I think every­one un­der­stands their game well al­though they’re pret­ty young guys.

“So it’s just for me to go through the plans [with them] and for them to try and ex­e­cute that and as I said, just try and keep them with clear thoughts and re­laxed as pos­si­ble to try and ex­e­cute the job.”

The first ODI bowls off here at the Shere-e-Bangla Na­tion­al Sta­di­um next Wednes­day.

(CMC)