After weeks of strikes, stand-offs, suspensions and the debate around the shifting of the venue of the first T20I due to the severe weather condition in the National capital, the three-match T20I series between India and the visiting Bangladesh side are all set to get underway at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday, November 03.
This is Bangladesh’s first-ever full-fledged tour of India and it will be an iconic one as both the teams will be locking horns with each other in a pink-ball Day-Night Test at the iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata. But before both sides’ will square-off in a three-match T20I series which is basically a precursor to next year’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
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The visitors, despite running India close on a couple of occasions like they did in the 2016 T20 World Cup or in last year’s Nidahas Trophy is yet to win a T20I match against the men in blue. Their record against the Men in Blue in T20Is reads 0-8, and with the likes of Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar not playing in the upcoming series, this series can be a golden opportunity for the Asian Tigers to finally break the blob against their big brothers.
But coming into the series, Bangladesh cricket found itself in a whole host of controversies; as their skipper, Shakib Al Hasan received a two-year suspension (one year of which is suspended). He was charged by the ICC for his failure to report the approaches of match-fixing to the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) on three separate occasions.
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Shakib accepted the charges and he can resume playing cricket after October 20, 2020, provided he does not commit any other offense as laid down by the ACSU. Naturally, the issue of Shakib has been widely discussed across the cricketing fraternity and the journalists did not leave the opportunity of asking India’s captain Rohit Sharma during the pre-match press conference in Delhi.
Sharma, in his typical manner, shrugged off the question. “I am not ICC,” he was quoted as saying in an event where he was unveiled as the brand ambassador of global sports brand Trusox.
