Mortaza out of playing on the tour of Zimbabwe in August. In early August, Mortaza travelled to Australia to undergo arthroscopic surgery on both knees; the expected recovery time from the operation was six weeks. Although Mortaza was reinstated as Bangladesh's captain for the team's home ODI series against Zimbabwe in October 2009, he did not play in the series. His injury persisted, and he did not play competitive cricket from his injury in July 2009 until February 2010. Mortaza took temporary exemption from Test cricket in 2009 due to continuous back injuries for an indefinite time and have not played any test match since Struggles with injury Once his knee had recovered, Mortaza suffered another setback when he was prevented from playing against New Zealand in February 2010 due to a fever. Mortaza made his comeback from injury in a match for Bangladesh Cricket Board XI against England during their tour of Bangladesh. Following the match, he commented that he had no interest in regaining the captaincy as in his opinion Shakib Al Hasan had done a good job. He also said that if his injury problems persisted he would contemplate retiring from Test cricket to focus on ODIs and T20s, similar to fellow fast bowlers Shane Bond, Shaun Tait, Andrew Flintoff, and Brett Lee. Mortaza declined to play in the Test series to avoid aggravating his knee injury, but played only the first out of the three ODIs against England before withdrawing from Bangladesh's squad as he was about to be dropped. Bangladesh lost the one match Mortaza played in, and the captain criticised his bowling. Shakib Al Hasan said "The way Mashrafe bowled before his injury, that Mashrafe we might have missed tonight. But the way he bowled in the last match and the practice match, not really. He needs some time to get back to full confidence and rhythm. He needs to play some games and get match-fit again." Mortaza continued to struggle for form in the 2010 Asia Cup, held in June, taking just two wickets in three matches at an average of 77.00. The coach, Jamie Siddons, commented that "He's going to have to improve a lot on his current form. Unfortunately there's no ready replacement for Mashrafe at the moment, we're hoping his experience will pull him through. We'll keep looking for others and if Mash can't stand up we'll have to replace