India vs Bangladesh Tests: It’s one-sided on paper, but what does the form guide say | Parami News

Rahul Dravid’s command to his day’s trophy magnet Virat Kohli as the last point that he whips Kohli with, was directed to be the last step to be taken. Dravid reminded Kohli, ‘one red to go, tick it’ in his last otakaal while addressing the man the man himself. Dravid had referred to the World Test Championship (WTC) which is a trophy that is yet to be written on the portfolio of net run scorer Virat Kohli for India. This is true for Team India as well – barring WTC, all ICC trophies have been won by team Kohli.

The wtc tournament which is relatively new in the icc calendar, is in its third cycled. The tournament was introduced to save test cricket from going too downhill hence there are some expectations. On the previous two occasions India have reached both those finals before this cycle, putting them amongst the most successful countries in the tournaments short history. In the first edition in 2021 New Zealand emerged, victors over India, while the last Final was all Australian in 2023.

It is no surprise that India are once again the strong favorites to navigate their way to a hat-trick of finals. But this time they also want to be like their star batsman Virat Kohli, who fills all the cupboards in his store room devoid of any further scratch.

This year after winning the second T20 World Cup title, Nepal broke the ICC trophy drought, and is now looking to bring the WTC trophy back to India.

With less than a year to go to the Cricket World Cup Final at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground event for which the two teams have which they quite frankly were for getting a tendentious bulgarian defeat sorry alluding testing cricket next steps September-October this year, the. The tourists’ spirits over the historic series against Pakistan that they had never won before were understandably high.

No Test has been lost both northern and southern neighbors by India in all history, and this Asian rival is ranked only second best to world number 2 again. But as far as the wtc points table rank is concerned it is not so wide spread as the test ranking. Now India is at the ultimate position and Bangladesh remains at the 4th position as the top two teams will compete for the one-off final scheduled at Lord’s next year.

Statistical View of India and Bangladesh Test Matches

India is like the Revenginator against 5 of their 10 test playing countries, however in steep performance rankings only than percentage loss, since more win percentage is over five test playing countries. But they have been quite embarrassing everywhere and especially against Bangladesh other than Afghanistan who had only one outing with them and miahed it. Out of the total matches played so far against Bangladesh which is 13, India registered victories in 11, 2 ended without the winner.

The Indian team is one of the two teams, the other one being South Africa, who remain undefeated for the Bangladesh team in Test matches. Pakistan was number three at that position until the last tour and swept Pakistan, two zero against them on that historic tour.

However, the win over Pakistan would have given Bangladesh a lot of confidence going to the tour of India.

What does the WTC form guide state…

Bangladesh: 6 matches – 3 wins, 3 losses, 45.83 points

Indeed, Bangladesh, who are mentioned above just thrashed Pakistan in what is termed as a milestone series and they stand fourth in WTC. They have 45.83 percentage points, and yes, still are very much chasing the finals, though the path is difficult for them.

In this WTC cycle, Bangladesh began with a home and away two-match series in November last year against New Zealand. They commenced with a proverbial bang, trashing the defending WTC title holders by 150 runs in the very first game. But unfortunately, they had the chance to win the series as well, but instead were beaten in the second game by four wickets. In their subsequent home series against Lanka, the results came out as expected but the Lankans won both the matches comprehensively. But Bangladesh kept themselves alive in the WTC final race with the now famous 2-0 sweep against Pakistan away from home. They thrashed Pakistan by 10 and 6 wickets respectively in the city of Rawalpindi. But it would be a herculean task for them against the Indian team which has over a decade of home test series winning streak.

India: Nine matches – six won – two lost – one drawn – 68.52%

It was only after losing the second WTC finals in a row to Australia in June last year that India came out of slumber. They went to realization in July 2023 itself by touring West Indies to play two-match series. India started with an innings victory against the Windies in first Test before settling for a draw in the second. This has been so far the only drawn Test for India in this cycle. This was followed by a tour of India to South Africa next, in 2023 year end for their next assignment. A return of similar results came with an 8-wicket win in the next game. The next game was played a day after the Boxing Day test where they lost in the first game of the series against the South African side, in the poorest of conditions. This was a fairly good result for India, in light of the history of Indians in South Africa.

A five-Test series followed where England was the visitor to India. The first Test occupied by the loss for the home team was of 28 runs and for them it was a good rising stroke as well. The next four matches were registered in India beaten only in final Test Australia won meaning terms as the series was there 4-1 in India’s favour and positive seas of success looking to qualify for their Third WTC tesseries finals in a row.

What can be the predictions regarding the standing of the teams?

On the other hand, Bangladesh came from a series victory only last month and this means that they are already in good red ball form, and their players are in the right frame of mind to contest the long five day battle.

On the contrary, it has been more than six months since India has played any Test match with their last red ball competition being back in February against the English team. So this Indian team pans out mostly in the white ball format and even there their last international outings were a 0-2 defeat against the Lankan Lions in a three match ODI series.

Most of team members participated in the domestic Duleep Trophy game to make the squad red ball ready except the senior most members of the team. It is this that many are wondering as to how the preparation went given that Bangladesh series is set to start on Thursday, 19th September, and it will be the first five day schedule after the World Cup.