Cricket South Africa (CSA) announced earlier that it will make a decision, in consultation with the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) regarding whether the national team will travel to Bangladesh for a scheduled two-Test match tour. The concerns regarding the red-ball tour, which was booked to be played from October 21 to November 2 in Bangladesh, started rising after the current political turmoil unfolded in the Asian country. Bangladesh had to see its parliament getting dissolved after then-Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajid resigned and fled the country following weeks-long public protests. The protests saw hundreds of people getting killed and disruption of day-to-day life significantly.
For this very reason, the International Cricket Council (ICC) decided earlier to move the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup out of Bangladesh. The hosting rights for the women’s mega-event were awarded to Bangladesh but the political landscape rendered them unable to arrange the tournament within the country, forcing the board to organize the games in the United Arab Emirates.
Keeping these developments in view, CSA decided to have an in-loco security assessment to rule out any risks. Earlier, the board told ESPN Cricinfo that despite the situation in Bangladesh having settled now, the board as well as SACA want to start an investigation to be on the safer side.
Following the said security inspection by experts, CSA has given a green signal for the Test tour, which is crucial for South Africa to proceed to the World Test Championship (WTC) final. The Proteas got only twelve Test matches on their plate for this WTC cycle, least for any team. After being done with half of these, the African team stands at the sixth position in the table, with two wins, three losses, and one draw. The remaining six Test matches will be divided into the sets of two to played against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.
Test format is not the only form of the game where the South African team is struggling. Although with many new faces, South Africa recently endured an ODI series defeat against Afghanistan and lost their first T20I match at the hands of Ireland just last night.
Interestingly, CSA had to tweak the Test tours to two red-ball games in each series during this cycle to accommodate their domestic T20 League, SA20 in January. The long-format series against Bangladesh will be their first tour of Asia in almost five years. The last time they played a Test in this part of the world was their 2020/21 tour of Pakistan where they lost the two-game series by 2-0. It has been almost a decade since the last time they toured Bangladesh for a red-ball series.
The Proteas team is likely to reach Bangladesh on October 16. The first match will be played at Shere Bangla Cricket Stadium, Dhaka on October 21 while the second game of the tour will be staged in Chattogram on October 29. Currently, both teams are busy playing away tours. South Africa is in the UAE for a T20I series against Ireland, while Bangladesh are hoping against hope to survive against India’s torment in the second Test match.
