InMobi

Historic win changes Bangladesh outlook

Test win over Sri Lanka will have sides that "did not take Bangladesh seriously" seeing the up-and-comers in new light, says BCB chief

Bangladesh's historic Test victory in Sri Lanka should encourage more teams to find space in their schedules to play the fast-improving side, according to the head of the country's cricket board.

In their 100th Test on Sunday, Bangladesh knocked over Rangana Herath's men by four wickets in Colombo to record their first victory away from home against top-class opponents.

Bangladesh celebrate historic win in Colombo

Bangladesh's only other victories on foreign soil since gaining Test status in 2000 came against Zimbabwe, and a West Indies side which had been weakened by a strike among their main players.

The victory has stoked hopes that Bangladesh are now finally becoming a force to be reckoned with after they beat England for the first time in a five-day match in October.

Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hassan told reporters that the win in Colombo could mark a sea-change in attitudes and that more matches with Test teams were already being pencilled in.

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"There is no doubt that every team will show their keen interest to play with us, way more than it has been in the past," Hassan said on Monday.

"They will field their full strength team against us. All the teams will see Bangladesh in a different way.

"We have done our groundwork for the next one year, what and how we need to do things. Actually, we will play 10 Test matches within this period.

"We've never got to play so many Tests in the past in one calendar year because the big teams did not take Bangladesh seriously."

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In 2015, Australia cancelled their two-Test tour of the densely-populated Asian nation due to security concerns, having not played a Test there since 2006.

While England went ahead with their tour of Bangladesh late last year, limited-overs players Eoin Morgan and Alex Hales made themselves unavailable. 

But after England's tour went by without incident having been given an unprecedented level of security, Cricket Australia chief exectuive James Sutherland told the ABC in January that Australia's chances of playing a Test series, likely to be in August or September this year, in Bangladesh were "quite high".

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"What we saw at the end of last year was the England team tour Bangladesh and we saw very strong security around the team," Sutherland said.

"We sent our head of security Sean Carroll over to observe for seven to 10 days, just to get a little bit of comfort on the systems and processes that are in place.

"I suppose anything can happen between now and then and we continue to monitor what happens in Bangladesh, but we work on the assumption that we're going to play and we start to plan accordingly.

"We certainly get a great deal of comfort from the way the security measures were put in place by the Bangladesh government in conjunction with the cricket board over there."

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Bangladesh's relative lack of success has also been one of the reasons major cricketing nations have been reluctant to schedule matches, with last month's one-off Test in Hyderabad their first ever match in India.

Their only tour of Australia came in 2003, where they played two Tests and three ODIs in Darwin and Cairnes

But the BCB president said the victory over Sri Lanka reflects a larger upturn in performances which dated back to Bangladesh's qualification for the quarter-finals of the one-day World Cup in 2015.

Since that tournament, Bangladesh have won bilateral one-day series against Pakistan, India and South Africa, reached the final of Asia Cup Twenty20 tournament and defeated England and Sri Lanka in Tests.

"The eagerness and faith for winning developed among the boys," said Hassan.

"Sometimes it gets deviated, but it can happen, given we are a young team."