After much deliberation, the date for Bangladesh’s one-off Test match against India has been fixed. The Tigers will be playing their first ever Test on India soil from February 8 to February 12 next year, BCCI have announced.
Bangladesh were initially set to tour India for a one-off Test later this year, around September-October. After problems of scheduling, the tour was postponed indefinitely. There has finally been an announcement on it, following shortly after the dates were fixed for a series of T20 fixtures that India will play against West Indies in the USA.
There have been demands that the India-Bangladesh series, which is also slated to see a reprise in 2020 when India tour Bangladesh, be named after two retired captains from the two countries – Sourav Ganguly and Naimur Rahman Durjoy. There has been no official confirmation on this yet.
The reason for this naming would be quite poignant. Bangladesh’s first Test captain, after they had received Test accreditation from the ICC in 2000, had been Durjoy. Bangladesh had played their first ever Test at the Bangabandhu Stadium in Dhaka, against an Indian side led by newly elected captain Sourav Ganguly.
Neighbouring countries Bangladesh and India can be expected to play a lot more Test cricket from now on, and the 2017 match, which is supposed to be held at Hyderabad, could be a harbinger of more auspicious relations between the two nations.
It had earlier been reported that Bangladesh are also considering the option of playing a few ODI and T20I games in India as well, along with the solitary Test.
BCB President Nazmul Hasan had said after the 2016 Test against India had been ratified, "We will play more cricket now against big teams, and if we win or draw against them, then our ranking will rise.”
Bangladesh are currently on a quest to prove that they are good enough to compete in the Test format with the seven other teams, and have much more to gain from a Test with India than do the hosts. With Test cricket being structured into a two-tier hierarchy, time is running out for The Tigers.
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