India will be facing-off against Bangladesh in the first Test of the 2-match series starting from September 19. The Tigers have never managed to defeat the Men in Blue so far in the format, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t do so, and former Indian cricketers Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh feel the same way.
Bangladesh will for sure not be short of confidence in the upcoming Test series against India. This is mainly thanks to their heroic performance against Pakistan in Rawalpindi last week’s Test match where they registered their first-ever victory against the Men in Green in the format.
Veteran batter Mushfiqur Rahim was the hero for Bangladesh with his incredible knock of 191. It enabled Bangladesh to take a healthy first-innings lead despite Pakistan putting nearly 450 runs on the board. In Pakistan’s second innings, the Bangladesh spinners would rip them apart and thus, the hosts would be bowled out for only 146 runs. The hosts were only able to post a target of 30 runs for the visitors, which they easily achieved without losing any wicket.
Both Raina and Harbhajan believe that the Bangladesh players that hurt Pakistan, can hurt India as well next month.
“Now, a team for Tests will be formed. Top players playing Duleep Trophy is a nice initiative by the BCCI. You get to know a lot of things when you play red-ball cricket. You cannot take Bangladesh lightly as they have a fine spin bowling attack and some good players who have done well for a long time. This series will be a fine match practice for the tour to Australia,” Raina told ANI.
“It will be a great series. Indian cricket team has been very capable and has potential. However, we can’t strike through Bangladesh as well, they have beaten Pakistan in the first Test match against Pakistan. Sometimes, smaller teams perform well in matches,” Harbhajan said.
The first Test of the India-Bangladesh series will be played in Chennai while the second will be played in Kanpur. Both the pitches tend to give spinners quite a lot of help and Bangladesh have plenty of them. Thus, this could very well turn out to be an interesting series.
