Tigers opt to bowl first

Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza won the toss and chose to bowl first against India at Cardiff on Tuesday in their second and last warm-up game for the ICC Cricket World Cup.

It will practically be Bangladesh’s only practice match ahead of the World Cup opener against South Africa on June 2 after their first warm-up game against Pakistan was washed out on last Sunday.

Mashrafe however believed that the Cardiff pitch that was under covers for a couple of days might have some early assistance which is why he opted to bowl first, reports BSS.

Even though it is just a practice game, Bangladesh earlier ruled out of any experiment as they would like to keep on the winning spree.

India captain Virat Kohli didn’t differ with Mashrafe, saying that he also would have wanted to bowl after getting themselves in to a difficult situation in similar conditions against New Zealand. India lost their first practice match by six wickets and a victory is badly needed for them before starting the World Cup campaign.

Kohli informed Kedar Jadhav is still recovering from the shoulder injury but Vijay Shankar is back.

But victory against Bangladesh at least in Cardiff would be tougher given that Bangladesh have hundred success rates in this very venue. They produced one of the biggest upset of the cricket history here, stunning the then all conquering Australia by five wickets in 2005. Later in ICC Champions Trophy in 2017, they beat New Zealand by five wickets also to move into the semifinal.

Bangladesh, eying to semifinal of the cricket’s biggest carnival, came here with euphoria of clinching the tri-series trophy in Ireland.

Bangladesh squad:

Tamim Iqbal, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mohammad Mithun, Soumya Sarkar, Mahmudullah Riyad, Sabbir Rahman, Mehedi Miraz, Rubel Hossain, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Mustafizur Rahman, Abu Jayed Rahi, Mohammad Saifuddin, Mosaddek Hossain.

India Squad:

Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Vijay Shankar, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Kulddep Yadav, Yuvendra Chahal, Bhuvnehwar Kumar, Kedar Jhadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Dinesh Karthik.