Ahead of the one-off Test against India, Bangladesh’s coach Chandika Hathurusingha has made few things clear, saying his side’s spinners are no less than India’s Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
Heading into the all-important Test, Hathurusingha gave an impression of not backing down after he made a crucial comparison between India’s Ravichandran Ashwin and Bangladesh’s Shakib-Al-Hasan.
Putting some emphasis on the presence of Mehedi Hasan and Taijul Islam, the coach said visitors are up for the challenge and promised to produce a neck-to-neck contest with the world No. 1 side.
“India have quality spinners in their team like the one of Ravichandran Ashwin; but if they have Ashwin we also Shakib. Apart from him, we have spinners like Taijul Islam and Mehedi Miraz in our team who have the ability to do well in Test matches. It means we are not far behind from them.”
Ravichandran Ashwin, who had a terrific 2016 with both bat and ball, will return to action after being rested for the T20Is against England. In the two home series against New Zealand and England respectively, Ashwin took 55 wickets and scored 377 runs with bat, including four fifties against Alastair Cook’s men.
For Bangladesh, Shakib-Al-Hasan had an impressive year too. In four matches played overall in the longer format, Shakib picked up 18 wickets at an average of 22.61. In batting, he notched up his career best score of 217 against New Zealand in Wellington earlier this year and amassed 390 runs at an average of 48.75.
Bangladesh will take part in a two-day practice match against India ‘A’ on February 5,6 before heading for the Test starting from February 9. However, this would be the first time both these sides would be playing each other in a Test match in India. All the eight games played so far have happened in the visitors’ land.