Excited Bangladesh gears up for pink ball Test
Image : Collected
|| CF Correspondent ||
Bangladesh keeps their foot firmly grounded as they prepare to play their maiden day-night Test against India in Kolkata, beginning from November 22.
Bangladesh, which lost the Indore Test by an innings and 130-run margin inside just three days, did look confident but they did not dare make a statement that they would make an upset despite the fact that the pink-ball cricket remains an unknown territory for both of the sides.
‘’No, we are not thinking about producing any upsets as such but we are looking at this as an opportunity and are very excited about it,’’ Mominul Haque told reporters in the pre-match press conference at Eden on Thursday.
‘’Everyone appears to be looking forward to the day-night Test match. The atmosphere at Kolkata is just amazing. Fans are cheering their teams and everyone seems really excited for the match. All the players also are eagerly waiting for the match. I think it will be an exciting affair,’’ he said.
We can’t be held hostage to the past. I personally feel that we need to learn from our mistakes in the earlier matches and try to work on that on the next matches,
‘’I don’t thinks it is like that because at the end of the day we are still playing cricket. Maybe there’s a bit of excitement as this version of cricket has been unchartered territory for both the teams. We are not excited about pink-ball; we are excited about pink-ball cricket,’’ he said.
The passion was palpable as the tickets for the first three days have already been sold out. Kolkata, the ‘City of Joy’ has gone for pink to mark the occasion a memorable one.
The historic Test will kick off at 1:30 pm Bangladesh Standard Time and the Indian Army paratroopers will fly into the Eden Gardens to hand over a pink ball each to the two captains just before the toss.
This will be followed by the ringing of the customary Eden Bell by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
The CAB will also felicitate the team members of Bangladesh-India first-ever Test in 2000, a game where Sourav Ganguly, the incumbent BCCI president made his debut as Test captain.
The members of Bangladesh’s inaugural Test, apart from Aminul Islam Bulbul and Al Shahriar Rokon, however, have already reached.
The city had different places colored in pink as that seems to be the color of the day while the 22 storied TATA building and another 42-storied building will have 3-D mapping.
So the match has historic value. India could feel some advantage because most of their players played with pink ball in the domestic circuit. Bangladesh’s only pink ball experience in domestic circuit was way back in 2013 National Cricket League (NCL) but the memory of that match has already become blurred.
Both Bangladesh and India had got just four days to practice with pink ball before the game.
But the fact is that most of the Indian players for Test squad were not in the T20 squad and hence they could take in intensive preparation for day-night Test in India when Bangladesh was playing a three-match T20 series against India.
The overall situations suggested that Indians are better prepared for the Test than Bangladeshi players. And they are better equipped too. Since the pink ball is believed to favor the seamers, India could feel pleased as they are boasted with the best pace attack at this moment. Pink ball is believed to offer bounce and swing, a thing that Indian pacers could muster well and that they proved it in Indore.
