|| CF Correspondent  ||

Bangladesh will bowl first in their sixth game of the ICC Cricket World Cup at Trent Bridge in Nottingham on Thursday after Australia captain Aaron Finch won the toss and opted to bat, predicting it a good surface to bat first.

The Tigers brought up two changes to the squad with Mohammad Saifuddin and Mosaddek Hossain Saikar being ruled out due to back and shoulder injury respectively.

Fast bolwer Rubel Hossain and batsman Sabbir Rahman replaced them in the squad.

Australia however made three changes—brining in Marcus Stonis, Adam Zampa and Nathan Coulter-Nile in the place of Shaun Marsh, Kane Richardson and Jason Behrendorff.

Fresh from their incredible seven-wicket win over West Indies, gunning down the Caribbean’s target of 322 runs in emphatic fashion, Bangladesh are looking to keep the  momentum going as they have the chance to seal the semifinal race still.

For Australia it is the match to reclaim the top spot as they sit in the third position with eight points. New Zealand are in the top of the table with nine points from five games. A victory of Australia would not only give them the top spot but also keep them in good stead to seal the semifinal spot.

Bangladesh won the World Cup mission in impressive fashion, having outclassed mighty South Africa by 21 runs before losing to New Zealand narrowly by two wickets and tasting a humiliating 106-run defeat to hosts England. Their match against Sri Lanka, in which they were dubbed absolute favourite was washed out. However a victory against West Indies brought them back into the contention once again.

The Tigers however sit at the fifth position with five points in five games.

Australia remains the only Test nation against whom Bangladesh didn’t win more than one match. Indeed they didn’t win any ODI against Australia in this decade –their only victory came against Australia in 2005 at Cardiff thanks to Mohammad Ashraful’s blistering 100.

That time Bangladesh’s win against the then all conquering Australia, boasted with the likes of Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Mathew Hayden and so many great players, was termed as the biggest upset in the ODI cricket history.

After 2011, Bangladesh indeed faced off Australia just twice—in 2015 World Cup and 2017 ICC Champions Trophy—and both times the match was washed out, meaning they didn’t play any compete ODI games against Aussies since 2011.

Australia is the team which however didn’t host Bangladesh to play any bilateral series since 2008 and quite often refused to tour in Bangladesh showing security concern before touring Tigers land for a two-match Test series in 2017. Bangladesh drew that Test series but no ODI series is played then.

As they didn’t play regularly, Bangladesh have the opportunity to face off Australia in just 20 matches. They have won just one and lost 18, one match produced no result that came in ICC Champions Trophy in 2017. Since their match in 2015 World Cup was washed out without a ball being bowled, it didn’t count as a match.