LAHORE: After a long gap of 12 years, the Bangladesh cricket team will arrive in Pakistan on Wednesday evening to play a three-match Twenty20 International series at the Gaddafi Stadium here from Jan 24 to 27.

The T20 series will be the first of the tour split into three phases. The second phase will see Bangladesh play Pakistan in the first Test in Karachi from February 7 while in the third, the Tigers will play a solitary One-day International and the second Test in the metropolis in the first week of April.

The itinerary was announced after the Bangladesh Cricket Board agreed to send the team to Pakistan followed by initial concerns citing security threats.

The consensus took place between the BCB and its Pakistani counterpart in Dubai on the sidelines of the International Cricket Council’s Governance Review Committee meeting. The last time Bangladesh played a one-off T20 in Pakistan was in April 2008. Pakistan won that match by 102 runs under the captaincy of Shoaib Malik.

So far both the countries have played 10 matches in the T20 format, with Pakistan having the upper hand with eight wins, while losing two on Bangladesh’s soil in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Pakistan have included four uncapped players in their squad for the series — Usman Qadir, Haris Rauf, Ammad Butt and Ahsan Ali — while, the visiting team is coming with only one uncapped player in Hasan Mahmud.

While the inclusion of Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Mohammad Naim and Liton Das, besides the captain, is making Bangladesh a strong side in batting line up, Pakistan are banking on just on experienced batsmen Hafeez and Shoaib Malik, besides captain Babar Azam.

Both captain, Babar and Mahmudullah will hold their pre-series media conferences at Gaddafi Stadium on Thursday and later both the teams will hold their practice sessions.

The matches will start at 2:00pm (PST).

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2020