MS too takes Tigers seriously

At the Grand Stand of Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday afternoon was standing a man, who looked to be in his mid 30s, with a picture of Shakib Al Hasan in his hand. Now that of course is a very common scenario, with several fans waiting at the stands just to have a glimpse of their heroes training.

Exception in this case was that he wasn't from Bangladesh. "Bangladesh should win this series. That should make everything a lot more exciting," Sameer Pathak from New Delhi quipped while waiting there for Shakib, one of his favourite players.

Sameer might have come to Dhaka on work, but his undying passion for the game kept him at the stadium throughout out Bangladesh's training session in the afternoon. "The way they played against Pakistan was brilliant," an excited Sameer said while citing one of the instances of the last series.

While Sameer had been a keen spectator of the Bangladesh-Pakistan series, India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni however, was on a different page. Like India's Test captain Virat Kohli, Dhoni too believes that the Tigers are a much stronger outfit in the ODIs. He however, admitted that he didn't get a chance to watch Bangladesh's 3-0 whitewash over Pakistan.

"Frankly it's very difficult for us to watch any other nation playing because we play throughout the year. Yes I have said thank you to one of the formats, but still the amount of cricket that has taken place… it's very difficult to follow any other series.

"As far as videos are concerned, we have the luxury of video analysts. More than that I can't really comment on it," said Dhoni.

"But what's more important is to have good first-class teams and I feel the upcoming players in Bangladesh, most of them have done well whenever they have got an opportunity to play. That's definitely good for them because to have a bigger pool of players is something that's important," he added.

The lone Test match was constantly interrupted by the rains and the ODIs are expected to receive a similar welcome. And that's why Dhoni wants his side to get the best possible start and get a head-start in the series.

"To win the series is first and foremost and taking one game at a time is something that makes the job slightly easy. Because there is also chance of rain so it's important to be focused. If we gather some kind of momentum it's important we switch off at the right time with the rain break.

"And once the time comes for us to switch on we do that and try to get as many runs as possible," said Dhoni.