SYLHET, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh can be a contender in the World Test Championship by taking advantage of its home games, coach Chandika Hathurusingha says.
Bangladesh has finished ninth in the last two WTC cycles but plans on doing much better.
“We have high expectations from test cricket in this cycle,” Hathurusingha said on Thursday.
They are hoping to continue a good run at home when they face Sri Lanka in a two-test series starting on Friday.
Bangladesh beat New Zealand in a drawn series last December, its last series. Before that, the home team won one-off tests against Afghanistan and Ireland that were not part of the WTC.
“If we can win most of our matches at home, then we give ourselves a good chance to be in contention in the World Test Championship’s latter stages,” Hathurusingha added. “Some of the series coming up are away. They are against higher ranked teams so quite challenging.
“Sri Lanka is a formidable, very experienced side. This test series gives us a good challenge but we are up for it.”
Bangladesh suffered a blow when leading batter Mushfiqur Rahim was ruled out of the series because of a thumb injury, sustained during the third one-day international on Monday.
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Towhid Hridoy, who has cemented a place in Bangladesh’s white-ball team in the past year, replaced Mushfiqur in the squad. Hridoy was uncapped in tests.
Hathurusingha said Mushfiqur’s experience will be greatly missed but he will back the young players.
“We are going to miss Mushy’s experience. He is in good form. It is very hard to replace this kind of experience straight away,” he said.
“We are going to back our young players. Hridoy is coming in. We also have (Shahadat Hossain) Dipu and Shadman (Islam) in the squad. They have been with the test team lately. It is an exciting time for Bangladesh cricket with so many young players. I will ask them to grab every opportunity.”
Sri Lanka has never lost a test match in Bangladesh. In 10 matches, it has won seven and drawn the rest.
Bangladesh has just one test win against Sri Lanka, in 2017 in Colombo, which happened to be its 100th test match.
Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva believes it can uphold its successful record in Bangladesh.
“Our target will be winning the test series and we are upbeat for it,” de Silva said.
He added their experience will give them the edge over Bangladesh.
“In any format of cricket, experience matters,” de Silva said. “We have a lot of senior players in our side; Angelo (Mathews), Dimuth (Karunaratne), Dinesh (Chandimal). Yeah, we have a good side.”
The teams shared the white-ball trophies. Sri Lanka won the Twenty20s 2-1 and Bangladesh secured the ODIs by the same margin.
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