Bangladesh’s performance graph has gone up and down in recent times. While they stunned Pakistan in Pakistan, they fell face first in India. Next up was South Africa and Bangladesh struggled against them too, losing the first Test.
But despite the setbacks, they haven’t lost hope and are still dreaming of registering their first Test win against the Proteas when the second Test begins on Tuesday.
“There is definitely a goal and it is to win the second Test,” Bangladesh left-arm spinner Taijul Islam said. “Our main target is to play as a team. Be it bowling, batting or fielding, we’ll play as a team. We’ll try our best to win the match.”
The seven-wicket win in the first Test kept South Africa unbeaten against Bangladesh with 13 wins and two drawsin 15 Tests.
South Africa now aim to win the second and final game as well to stay in the race for a spot in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC). Stand-in captain Aiden Markram said the possibility of making WTC final won’t add pressure to their goal of a series victory.
“I mean, I don’t think it really adds pressure for us. It’s just an exciting opportunity,” Markram said. “So that’s almost how we’re trying to view it. Probably, we still need to win a lot of the remaining matches and we’ve got five left until that. Five Test matches is a lot of cricket to be played. So that’s pretty much where we are at now. We hopefully can go session by session, game by game. We hopefully give ourselves a good chance. But we are excited moving forward.”
Bangladesh were dismissed for 106 in the first innings of the opening Test and they will surely need to bat better if they are to draw level in the series.
Match starts: 9.30am IST
With inputs from AP/PTI
