Bangladesh have shown that they are a force to reckon with, says Sunil Gavaskar

The legendary India cricketer Sunil Gavaskar feels that the Rohit Sharma-led side needs to be mindful when playing against Bangladesh in the two-match Test series which he says the visitors come on the back of a historic 2-0 series win in Pakistan.

India will play the first Test of the series against Bangladesh, which begins its home season from September 19-23 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. The second Test will then be played between the two teams from September 27 to October 1 at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur.

"By beating Pakistan in both the Test matches played in Pakistan, the Bangladesh team have shown that they are a force to reckon with. Even a couple of years back, when India toured Bangladesh, they were given a good fight by the Bangladeshis. Now with the series win against Pakistan under their belt, they are primed to take on India too."

"They have some fine players in their ranks and some new promising players who no longer have the awe of the opposition that seemed to characterise their early forays into the international game. Now, every team that play them know they can't put their guard down as they could be knocked down as the Pakistanis found out. It will certainly be a series to look forward to," wrote Gavaskar in his column for *mid-day*.

Both Tests comprise the current 2023-2025 World Test Championship cycle. India occupies the top of the chart with 68.52 percentage points, and Bangladesh is at the fourth position with 45.83 percentage points.

The Bangladesh series will also mark the launch of a brutal 10-match Test season for India as New Zealand visit the country for three Tests in October-November.

After this, India will take a flight to Australia for the all-important five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy series to be able to enter into the fiasco of two teams for the 2025 World Test Championship final, to be held at Lord's from June 11-15 next year.

"India have 10 Test matches coming up over the next four and a half months and they need to win at least five of them to give themselves a good chance to qualify for the World Test Championship final. None of these Tests will be easy and so we could be in for an exciting summer of cricket," added Gavaskar.

He also feels hosting the Duleep Trophy before the international home season begins was a smart move by BCCI, though admitting that the first two rounds didn't give an insight into how good the batters were in the matches. "It's never easy for the best of players to go cold into an international competition, never mind the quality of the opposition."

This time, with all the India bowlers rested, it won't be too easy to determine which batter is good since they would be facing basically second-string bowlers. So, though the matches will be good tuning for the season to come, the selectors won't get much insight into how good the batters really are.