Bangladesh begin a tour of India with the first of two Test matches, the opening one of which gets underway in Chennai on Thursday as we see whether they can back up their fine recent series win over Pakistan in this format.
India lay claims for being the best Test team in the world at present, certainly on home soil, so this will be a really sizeable test for Bangladesh but after winning in Pakistan they can attack these matches with little to lose.
India
This will be the first time that India have played Test cricket since they cruised past England in a pretty high profile series back in March. Since then they have been on a diet of white ball cricket which means that they will be playing Test cricket for the first time under Gautam Gambhir after he replaced Rahul Dravid as coach. You wouldn’t think much would change for the Indians though because they are incredibly solid on home soil.
Much is often made of the Indian batting at home but really they usually only need to stay upright because their bowlers are so effective that they often set up the game for the team. On the rare occasions that they go around the park on home soil then their batting is there to bail them out but it isn’t needed too often. It will be interesting to see if India need to come on for the run though having not played Test cricket for six months.
Bangladesh
It was a historic win for Bangladesh in Pakistan recently. I do think it should be noted that Pakistan have all sorts of problems at the minute but none of that is a concern to Bangladesh. They could only beat what was in front of them and they did that with a class and a fair degree of comfort. That will bring about heightened expectation in the future but I don’t think anyone is really thinking that Bangladesh should aim for anything more than being competitive against the very best sides in the world at the minute.
That should be their aim and if their bowlers can keep tabs on the Indian batters then you would imagine that is a challenge that they can get close to achieving. Bangladesh have the batters and the depth within their batting order to be competitive with the bat but often where teams fail in this part of the world is keeping control when they have the ball in hand. That is what they did so well in Pakistan and with one or two returning to Test cricket after an extended absence in the India side there could be openings for the tourists.
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Team News
Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul are both fit to take their place in the side for this match and it would appear that India will begin the Gambhir regime with a third spinner in their bowling attack with Kuldeep Yadav expected to play.
Bangladesh do have Shakib Al Hasan available despite him playing in a County Championship match last week so the only change they might consider is to bring a third spinner into the side. If they go down that route that is likely to be Taijul Islam.
Betting
Mehidy Hasan Miraz is becoming one of the more important players for Bangladesh in this format of the game and so it is no surprise that his coach thinks that he is ready to take on the mantle left by Shakib whenever it is that he departs the Test scene. He arrives in India off the back of a very good series against Pakistan where he made 70s in both of the innings that he batted and picked up a fair share of the wickets even though the conditions suited the seamers a little more.
That certainly isn’t going to be the case here in Chennai. This pitch will spin it is just a question of how early it will do it and you would imagine the answer will be fairly early if India are going in with a third spinner. Mehidy has a performance line of 85.5 for this match and with his two totals in Pakistan coming to 197 and 188 even though he only batted once in each match, there has to be a decent chance he can cover this. He scored points with bat, ball and in the field in both matches against Pakistan so even an average match can get him up to 86 points. Mehidy has covered this line in his last 10 Tests, two of which were against India, so I think the over is the play in this one.
Tips
Back M.Hasan Miraz’s Performance – Over 85.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
