After a really enjoyable ODI series, Bangladesh and India lose the coloured clothes and put the whites on to begin a two match Test series which begins on Wednesday and is the more important part of the tour for the tourists.
India have suddenly been offered a bit of hope in their quest to make it back to the World Test Championship final but Bangladesh tend to play their home conditions well and will be buoyed by their win in the ODI series.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh began 2022 with an historic Test match win in New Zealand where they all played out of their skin but it has been a year of struggle with the red ball since then as they have lost six of their last seven matches and with each match they play that win in Mount Maunganui is looking more and more of a freak result. Their latest Test outing was back in June when they went down pretty tamely to West Indies and they’ll need much better than that effort if they are to win here.
Usually Bangladesh perform well with the ball in their home conditions so you would imagine that their success or otherwise will be determined by how they go with the bat. I always feel that they get stuck with the bat in home conditions and when they bat away from home they are able to flow a little more. If they can set a good platform at the top some of their players picked up some form in the ODIs so they could score well down the order.
India
India didn’t really give much care and attention to the ODI matches but they still should have won all three but the problem they had was injuries kept on coming and they are going to impact them in this series as well. This is a series India will be taking seriously because with the top two in the World Test Championship meeting over Christmas and Pakistan having lost two matches recently, the door has opened for India to make it into the final with a couple of wins here.
You would imagine the Indian batting will take care of itself such is the depth that they have with a couple of their spin options offering up very good batting potential too, so it will be all about whether those spinners can assist the seamers in getting the required 20 wickets here. Sometimes picking up wickets in Bangladesh can be much easier than at other times but all the signs are that this will be a decent batting track so they’ll need to bowl well.
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Team News
There is no Taskin Ahmed or Tamim Iqbal for Bangladesh in this match. Zakir Hasan will make his debut in the game and will open the batting while Ebadot Hossain, Shoriful Islam and Khaled Ahmed look set to pick up the slack in the absence of Taskin.
Rohit Sharma has been ruled out of this one with the injury he sustained in the ODI series so KL Rahul will both open the batting and captain the side. It looks like India intend to go in with three spinners which means Kuldeep Yadav will get a game.
Betting
Mehidy Hasan Miraz was the player of the ODI series and while white ball and red ball are different things, his Test record on this ground is very encouraging and makes me think that he can cover a performance line of 105.5, especially when you consider that he scored a ton in one of the ODI matches. While this is going to be a good pitch for batting, it is likely to dust up a bit as it goes along so Mehidy should be involved in the match throughout.
His highest Test score came on this ground when he scored 103 last year and five times in 12 bowling innings on this ground he has taken three or more wickets. He is likely to get two batting innings and if he lives up to his Test average here of 24.45 then he is only going to need three wickets in the match to cover this performance total. That is likely to have every chance, particularly if the Bangladesh seamers get blunted early on which could well happen. I like the over on this performance line.
Tips
Back M.Hasan Miraz’s Performance – Over 105.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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