Tigers begin warm-up today

The Bangladesh national cricket team will begin their tour of India with a two-day warm-up game against India A at the Gymkhana Ground in Hyderabad today.

The visitors will want to utilise this opportunity to the fullest considering that they played their cricket in bouncy and windy conditions in New Zealand in the last month. While the conditions in Hyderabad will no doubt be similar to those of Bangladesh, they will still need to work on readjusting to a subcontinental pitch following their month-long New Zealand tour.

Aside from the 15 chosen players in the team, Bangladesh have taken along with them an extra pacer, Abu Jayed, to play the warm-up game. It seems like the Bangladesh team management does not want to disclose their pacers to the Indian team prior to the one-off Test which is scheduled to begin on February 9.

There is a good possibility that the team management will rest two pacers in this practice match and play them directly in the Test in order to maintain the element of surprise. However, it remains uncertain who those two pacers will be.

As of now, there are four pacers in the team -- Taskin Ahmed, Shubhashis Roy, Shafiul Islam and Kamrul Islam Rabbi. Going by Kamrul's good performance in New Zealand, it is almost a certainty that he is going to find a place for the Hyderabad Test.

As far as the batting order is concerned, it will not be a surprise if the team management gives all their main batters a go in the warm-up game, just so they get a look at the conditions ahead of the Test.

The inclusion of Liton Das in the 15-member squad has made things interesting as far as the final eleven for the Test in Hyderabad is concerned.

Mushfiqur has been practicing his keeping during the last few training sessions. However, if they want the skipper to play as a specialist batsman, in order to provide his battered fingers some space, then they will have to drop either a batsman or a bowler from the team. If they drop a bowler, then they will probably go with just two pacers in the Test.

All in all, a lot of the strategy will become clearer once the two-day warm-up game begins.

The Bangladesh national team attended their second practice session yesterday with a special focus on fielding. Coach Richard Halsall, in order to counter the poor fielding effort that the Tigers had shown in New Zealand, introduced a few different fielding training tactics yesterday and the players, according to Taskin Ahmed, enjoyed them quite a lot.