India finally join the pink Test revolution this week when they end their Test series with Bangladesh with the first such type of the new trend in a match which begins at Eden Gardens on Friday. All eyes will be on Kolkata to see if this makes the required effect in India.
India dominated the first Test and under normal circumstances they would be expected to continue to control proceedings here, but the day-night element of the match and the pink ball being used makes this one slightly more of a lottery.
India
Not for the first time in this home spell, India were near enough perfect in the opening match of the series. They will be looking for a repeat of that performance here and it will be interesting to see if they can deliver it given that they will be up against the pink ball here. If conditions go unchanged then you would expect India to dominate once again but if dew and things get involved then this could get away from them.
The one thing you wouldn’t think will change is the destruction the Indian batting line up can cause. If you think of day-night ODIs the white ball rarely swings so it is unlikely the batting is going to be hampered any. India have enough seamers that if the spinners can’t grip the ball they can still get the job done but it is certainly an interesting dynamic which has to be considered going into the match.
Bangladesh
The concerns that people will have had over this Bangladesh side pretty much came to fruition in the opening Test. You looked at their squad and wondered where 20 wickets would come from and in truth they never really looked like taking 10 let alone 20. That has to change if they are going to win this match, but again when you look down their squad list, you just don’t see where that is going to happen.
One way would be to win the toss and bat first and pile up the runs to put India under scoreboard pressure but there are a couple of obvious problems with that – the first that they have no control over the toss and the second being that even if they do get to bat first, if their line up good enough to put up a more than competitive score? The evidence in the opening match suggests that it isn’t.
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Team News
India had a good balance in the first Test and they might well stick with an unchanged side, unless they have done some research and don’t want to play both spinners. That could lead to R Ashwin being slightly vulnerable.
Bangladesh will be making personnel and batting order changes here. Mustafizur Rahman and Al-Amin Hossain are expected to come back into the team while Mushfiqur Rahim is expected to bat at four, which is the lowest he should be when he isn’t keeping wicket.
Eden Gardens
Surprisingly there have only been 41 previous Test matches on this ground with almost half of those ending in draws. 20 of those matches have finished drawn and of the other 21 matches India have 12 wins and nine defeats so you couldn’t call them dominant at this venue by any stretch of the imagination. Bangladesh play Test cricket here for the first time, and this is the first Test with the pink ball.
In recent matches, scores here have been on the lower side of the norm in India, despite the amount of drawn games. The draw between India and Sri Lanka in the last match played here was the only draw in the 21st century so the tide might well be turning on that front. It will be interesting to see whether the dynamics change with the pink ball.
Betting
I’m not going to go too mad here. There are just so many unknowns that it makes it much harder than normal to bet on so with that in mind I’m keeping my activity to a minimum heading into the match. It might be that something jumps up during the game that we can get on but for now I’ll head to the performances for the one bet.
The line for Mohammad Shami sits at 90.5 which looks quite low to me. He comes into this match off the back of seven wickets in the opening match of the series which backs up 13 in three matches against South Africa earlier in the winter. I don’t expect the spinners to get as much as they normally would with the dew that is around so five wickets shouldn’t be beyond Shami. Of course if he snaffles a catch or 11 runs we don’t even need five scalps. That is why I think the line is too low.
Tips
Back M.Shami’s Performance – Over 90.5pts for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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