The Story of first India-Bangladesh Test encounter

Indian team led by Sourav Ganguly thrashed Bangladesh by 9 wickets at Dhaka in the very first test played between the two countries.

For India, Left arm spinner Sunil Joshi displayed brilliant all-round performance and earned Man of the Match award.

10th June 2000, Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat first on a batting track. To everyone’s surprize, Bangladesh scored 400 runs in the first inning. Aminul Islam scored maiden century (145) and became the first Bangladesh player to score century for his country in the test cricket. He was well supported by Habibul Bashar (71). Sunil Joshi picked up 5 wickets for India. 

Indian team responded in a ppositive manner and took a lead of 29 runs in the first innings. Sunil Joshi showed his batting skills and scored his highest score of 92. Skipper Ganguly (84) and S Ramesh (58) also scored half centuries. For Bangladesh, Naimur Rahman took 6 wickets for 132 runs. 

The match was well balanced at the end of first innings and Bangladesh should have capitalized it but what happened next was the lack of experience displayed by Bangladesh players.

Against an experienced bowling attack, Bangladesh team was bowled out for just 93 runs. The team that had showed promise in the first innings completely wiped out in the second innings to some superb bowling by Srinath (3/19), Joshi (3/27) and Agarkar (2/16). Only two Bangladesh players - Habibul Bashar (30) & Khaled Mashud (21) had managed to reach double figures.

India achieved the winning target of 64 in just 15 overs with 9 wickets in hand. An unbeaten partnership of 53 runs between Rahul Dravid (41*) and Shiv Sunder Das (22*) helped India to register this special win against Bangladesh.