Bangladesh will be looking to inflict more misery on reigning world champions England by clinching their maiden T20 series victory when they host the second T20I of the three-match series at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur of Dhaka today.
The match is scheduled to start at 03:00pm (BST) and will be telecast live on TSports and GTV.
Bangladesh made a strong comeback in the match after England got the better of them in the first 10 overs of their innings as the hosts restricted the touring side to 156-6 in their stipulated overs.
The hosts’ batters then demonstrated a clinical performance and chased down the target with 12 balls to spare to help their side go 1-0 up in the series and now they will be eyeing to repeat the same performance to register their maiden series win over the Three Lions in any format of the game.
“I think as the game will be played in Mirpur, it will be a good wicket. Till now we have played well and we beat them in Chattogram and we will try to beat them here as well. The momentum is on our side and we need to keep that,” pacer Hasan Mahmud told reporters in Mirpur on Saturday.
“At the moment, the team has one of the best bunch players in (T20Is). They are all very energetic and give a lot of effort. If we can stick with this batch, we can be ahead in any format,” he added.
The win in the match which will also confirm Bangladesh’s series victory over England will also be a big relief for the hosts as they were unable to win the last two home T20I series against Pakistan and Afghanistan respectively.
The last time Bangladesh won a T20I series at home was back in September 2021 when they beat New Zealand by a 3-2 margin while before that series, they also registered a 4-1 series win over Australia.
However, both the series wins came under scrutiny due to the fact that Bangladesh won these series by playing on rank-turner wickets at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium which provided low scores in all 10 games of these series.
On the other hand, England will be looking to bounce back in the series by winning the second match of the series.
England failed to do justice with the kind of squad they have for the series in the opening game and suffered a crushing defeat to find them in a position of losing the series.
The defeat in the second game will confirm England’s third consecutive bilateral series defeat in this format as they previously lost to India and South Africa by the same 1-2 margin.
However, since winning the last ICC T20 World Cup in Australia, they didn’t play any games in this format and the series defeat will raise a big question mark on their world cup victory, if not anything else.
