Bangladesh and Australia both reached Dhaka and started their three-day quarantine. COURTESY
Bangladesh and Australia both reached Dhaka and started their three-day quarantine at the InterContinental Dhaka ahead of their first bilateral T20I series, scheduled to begin on August 3.
A 17-member Bangladesh contingent arrived from Harare following the tour of Zimbabwe at 9:00am yesterday while a 32-member Australian contingent arrived from Barbados following their tour of the West Indies, in the afternoon. Bangladesh have been severely dented by injuries and are missing key players like Tamim Iqbal, Liton Das, Mushfiqur Rahim and young leg-spinner Aminul Islam all of whom were part of the Zimbabwe T20I series but had to leave the bio-secure bubble due to injury or personal tragedy. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) had earlier asked Rubel Hossain, Taijul Islam, Mosaddek Hossain and Mohammad Mithun to stay back in Harare with the team to make up for the missing players in the T20I squad for the Australia series. Bangladesh have recently had some off-field issues -- T20I skipper Mahmudullah Riyad's unresolved Test retirement being most noteworthy among them -- but a determined group of Tigers did not let that impact their on-field performance, sweeping series across formats against a low-ranked Zimbabwe.
However, Mahmudullah and Co will face a much sterner test against the formidable Australians, who are touring Bangladesh for only the third time for a bilateral series. The Aussies last toured Bangladesh in 2017 to take part in a two-match Test series in which the Tigers registered their historic maiden win against Australia in the longest format to level the series 1-1. So far, the two teams have faced each other four times in the shortest format with all the matches being part of ICC events. Australia, who won their recent ODI series against the West Indies 2-1 but lost the five-match T20I series 4-1 on the same tour, will be looking to boost their confidence with a dominant showing in the series, which is being considered part of preparations for the upcoming T20 World Cup. Having lost regular limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch to a knee injury during their tour of the Caribbean, Australia are yet to announce a skipper for the series against Bangladesh.
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