Australia To Tour Bangladesh For T20I Series Despite Covid Concerns

Australia will tour Bangladesh for a five-match T20I series from August 3 to 9, it has been confirmed. All the matches will be played at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur.

The tour will be Australia's first visit to Bangladesh since September 2017, when they visited the country for two Tests in Dhaka and Chattogram.

Earlier, Australia had cancelled their 2015 tour and pulled out of the 2016 under-19 World Cup for security reasons.

Both Australia and Bangladesh are expected to arrive in Dhaka after completing their tours of the West Indies and Zimbabwe respectively on July 29.

Australia will come in a charter flight from Barbados to Dhaka. Upon arrival, both squads will go through a three-day room quarantine period at the hotel, which will be strictly off-limits for the public.

After the short quarantine period is over, both teams will commence practice on August 1 at the stadium ahead of the series.

Australia will have no changes from the squad of 20 currently in the Caribbean. It means that first-choice players David Warner, Glenn Maxwell, Pat Cummins, Steve Smith, Marcus Stoinis and Jhye Richardson will continue to miss out.

Bangladesh and Australia have met each other four times in T20Is. All four meetings have come in the T20 World Cups, with Australia emerging victorious on all occasions.

Australia squad: Aaron Finch (captain), Ashton Agar, Wes Agar, Jason Behrendorff, Alex Carey, Dan Christian, Josh Hazlewood, Moises Henriques, Mitchell Marsh, Ben McDermott, Riley Meredith, Josh Philippe, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Ashton Turner, Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade (vice-captain) and Adam Zampa.

Travelling reserves: Nathan Ellils and Tanveer Sangha.