Can Bangladesh spring in a surprise against India in the test series?
Bangladesh is scheduled to play a couple of Test matches in India in November-December 2019. It will be one of their most difficult challenges in Test cricket. We would have to dig deep and count the number of miracles that have happened in the game of cricket to ensure a reasonable chance of Bangladesh beating India in India in a Test match, let alone a Test series.
Bangladesh has won just one Test series out of the last 15 they have played. The only win they achieved was against the No. 8 ranked West Indies side at home. Their last Test series win away from home came 30 Test series ago, that too against the same opposition, in July 2009. Given their history in an away Test series and looking at their current performance in the longest format, it is highly unlikely that they can beat India in India.
Taking the most optimistic option into consideration, the only way they could beat India is to take 20 wickets as it seems comparatively easier than to score 600 runs in a match against the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja preceded by Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami. According to the India vs Bangladesh schedule for the Test series, the venues for the two Tests are Indore and Kolkata. The Holkar Stadium and the Eden Gardens provide enough for the batters to stay on the top of the bowlers. This is a big reason to worry for the visitors if they are relying on their bowlers to take 20 Indian wickets on batting-friendly pitches.
Once again they will be expecting their veterans Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan, and Mushfiqur Rahim to deliver the goods. The southpaw opener has scored 441 runs in the 6 Tests that he has played over the last 24 months. He has scored a hundred and a couple of the fifties in that period. The all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been a part of just 5 Tests since October 2017. He has scored 268 runs at an average under 30 and picked up 22 wickets at 20.50 apiece.
The wicket-keeper batsman Mushfiqur Rahim has played 9 Tests in the same period. He scored 92 in the first innings in said period and has been tremendously inconsistent since then. Apart from the half-century, he scored 219* against Zimbabwe in November 2018. But, his scores on either side of that innings have been 1, 0, 24, 31 and 4, 14, 0. These numbers are not going to give hope to anybody who is rooting for a miracle and expecting a result other than two big wins for Team India over Bangladesh.
Bangladesh will appear for the first time in the World Test Championship Schedule on their tour to India. On the other hand, the Indians will have already played one away and one home series against West Indies and South Africa respectively and will be on their way to dominating another series.
