Photo: Collected
Bangladesh will take on India in their final warm-up match ahead of the ICC Men’s World Cup on Saturday (1 May) in New York. The match will begin at 8:30 pm (Bangladesh time).
The venue, Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, is a newly constructed cricket ground, having never hosted a competitive match before this warm-up. Even weeks before this match, the venue was under construction. Both Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and India’s captain Rohit Sharma expressed their excitement about the venue.
The Nassau County International Cricket Stadium is using drop-in pitches for World Cup matches. These pitches, prepared elsewhere, were recently installed at the venue.
Drop-in pitches are not commonplace in Bangladesh, but are frequently used in countries like Australia and New Zealand. While these pitches are easy to maintain, they require significant effort to transport and install. Large cranes are needed to move the pitches to a new venue. However, the advantage is that these pitches can be removed and returned to their “nursery” after use.
“It’s unbelievable. I think it’s crazy,” Shanto said, expressing his excitement about the New York stadium in a video released by the ICC. “I mean, we all saw on the internet that there was nothing (three months ago). Now it looks like a proper stadium and feels great. It feels very good and looks crazy to me.”
Shanto was clearly impressed by the venue’s rapid transformation, having followed its construction on social media.
“It looks beautiful. It's quite an open ground. When we come here and play our first game, I just can't wait to feel the atmosphere in the stadium,” Rohit Sharma, the veteran India captain, said about the same venue.
In this match, Bangladesh will focus on fine-tuning their performance before heading to the main event. The struggling top order will be a key area of focus for the team.
Bangladesh's first warm-up match against the USA was abandoned due to bad weather. Prior to that, Bangladesh surprisingly lost a three-match T20I series against the USA 2-1.
The Tigers will take on their Asian rivals Sri Lanka in their first World Cup match on June 7 (New York time) in Dallas, and in their second match, they will face South Africa on June 10th in New York.
Messenger/Mumu
