Stand-in skipper Mehidy eyes to make 50th Test memorable

Bangladesh interim Test skipper Mehidy Hasan said on Friday that he is eyeing to make his 50th Test match memorable as he prepares to lead Tigers in the two-match Test series opener against West Indies from today.

Bangladesh are set to face West Indies in their final Test series of the year, scheduled to begin tonight at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua. The match begins at 8pm BST.

Bangladesh do not have pleasant memories of beginning their Caribbean tour in Antigua as they were bundled out for 103 and 43 in the previous two occasions.

Batting has been the biggest worry for Bangladesh in 2024 and the record at Antigua won’t really inspire them much when the visitors are without their full-time skipper Najmul Hossain and veteran campaigner Mushfiqur Rahim due to injury along with Shakib al Hasan, who recently announced his retirement.

Mehidy, who will lead the side in absence of Najmul, seemed excited with his available resources.

“I am feeling good to play 50 Tests and this is a good achievement for the country and for me and I want to make it memorable,” Mehidy told reporters ahead of the game.

“We didn’t play good Test in Antigua and lost badly here and this time we came here with a fresh set-up and practised for 10 days and we played a practice match and the players took good preparation. I am confident that our team will do well and we can win the match by playing good cricket. If we can play as a team we hope we will have a good result in the Test match. We practised a lot and worked hard here,” he said.

“Our target is to play good cricket and when we played here before we could not do well in Test cricket and most importantly we could not win here during the last four years and we played two Test matches here and our target is to win and so that everyone can perform.”

Mehidy said that they don’t have some senior players but he is not worried about it.

“Actually we don’t have some senior players but we have me, Liton Das, and Mominul and they are very experienced. I think it’s much better and we just think about positives all the time and we don’t think about negative and we just focus on our game,” he said.

“Yeah this can happen and sometime we are missing some senior players like Mushy is injured and he is not playing and obviously Shakib is not there and he already mentioned that going to retire. It’s been tough but we still believe that we can get better and we have good side right now some of the young players coming and they had good opportunity to perform well in this condition and actually we believe that we can play well and come strongly,” he added.