Tigers to play second intra-squad game Monday

Bangladesh national cricket team will play the second 2-day intra-squad practice game from Monday.

They played the first two-squad game on 2-3 October. The match will be played at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.

Bangladesh Test captain Mominul Haque starred in the first game hitting a ton. Sai Hassan, Soumya Sarkar also did well hitting the fifties, and Taksin Ahmed and Taijul Islam shone with the ball taking three wickets each on day one.

“It was great to play this game because we were out of any sort of competitive cricket for a long time. I was nervous before the game starts. I think the long game made this situation. We have had a good preparation camp before the match. Especially, our pace-bowlers did really well. Their hard world paid off in the match. I have tried to take it as a Test match. We don’t know when we get another chance to play a Test. Overall, this match was really a good opportunity for to back to the game again,” Mominul told on Sunday after the first intra-squad game.

Tigers were scheduled to tour Sri Lanka last month for a three-match Test series. But due to the COVID-19 restriction in the island nation, the series has been postponed . After the postponement of this series, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) decided to keep the cricketers busy playing among themselves.

After the second and final two-day intra-squad game, the members of the Bangladesh team will play a three-match one-day series. Earlier, they were scheduled to play a three-day practice game, but the management changed to a three-match one-day series.

These matches are the parts of Tigers’ ongoing bio-secure training camp which will continue till 15 October. After that, BCB is expected to host a T20 league so that the cricketers can resume playing at the domestic level.

The competitive cricket match in Bangladesh was in March this year. Since then, all the cricketing activities were on hold due to the deadly outbreak of COVID-19. However, a bunch of the national team players started an individual training programme arranged by BCB before Eid-ul-Azha.

Bangladesh might play their next international game at home when West Indies will tour the country in January next year. And the Tigers will tour New Zealand in March same year which will be marked as Bangladesh’s first away series after the hiatus forced by COVID-19.