Bangladesh v India: The Rivalry Bangladesh Wants

Bangladesh has played India more than seventy times across the three formats and has never beaten them in a Test match. Thirteen defeats, two draws, no wins. It is the starkest single line in Bangladesh's record book and it sits oddly beside the fifty-over history, where Bangladesh has knocked India out of a World Cup, beaten them in an Asia Cup on the way to a final, and won two bilateral one-day series at home.

That split — competitive over fifty overs, comprehensively beaten over five days — is the whole shape of the fixture. It is also the reason the relationship is so charged. Bangladesh knows it can beat India on a given day, which makes every scheduling decision, every umpiring call and every dismissive remark from an Indian commentator land harder than it would if the gap were simply unbridgeable.

India is the neighbour, the largest market in the game, the board Bangladesh needs on side, and the team Bangladeshi supporters most want beaten. All four things at once.

Dhaka, November 2000

Bangladesh's first Test as a full member was against India, at Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka, from 10 to 13 November 2000.

They did better than anyone expected. Aminul Islam batted for most of two days and made 145 in the first innings. Naimur Rahman, captaining the side, took six wickets when India replied. Bangladesh then collapsed in their second innings and lost by nine wickets inside four days.

The pattern established there — one good innings, one good bowling spell, one collapse — described Bangladesh Test cricket for the next fifteen years and describes their Test record against India still. The way the format has developed since is set out in the history of Bangladesh cricket.

Port of Spain, 17 March 2007

The result that made Bangladesh a serious opponent rather than a courtesy fixture was in Trinidad, in the opening group stage of the 2007 World Cup.

India batted first and were dismissed for 191. Bangladesh's three teenagers — Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim and Shakib Al Hasan — all made runs, and Bangladesh won by five wickets with several overs remaining. Mashrafe Mortaza took four wickets.

India did not recover. They lost to Sri Lanka as well and went out of the tournament in the first round, which in commercial terms was the most damaging thing that had happened to a World Cup up to that point. In Dhaka it produced the largest spontaneous celebration Bangladeshi cricket had seen. The wider tournament, in which Bangladesh also beat South Africa, is covered in the 2007 Cricket World Cup guide.

The consequences of that match for how India regarded Bangladesh were significant and not all favourable. The argument that Bangladesh should not be given fixtures that could cost a tournament its biggest audience was made openly afterwards, and it has echoed through every scheduling discussion since.

Mirpur, 16 March 2012

Five years later Bangladesh beat India again, in an Asia Cup group match at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium, and did it chasing.

India made 289 for five. Sachin Tendulkar scored 114 in that innings, the hundredth international century of his career, an occasion the crowd applauded and then almost immediately stopped caring about. Bangladesh chased 290 and got there with four balls to spare, Tamim Iqbal making 70 and Shakib Al Hasan taking the match award.

Bangladesh finished above India in that group and reached their first Asia Cup final, where they lost to Pakistan by two runs. Shakib was player of the tournament. It was the point at which Bangladesh stopped being a side that produced isolated upsets and became one that could string a week together — the arc traced in the guide to Bangladesh in Asia Cup finals, and Shakib's own contribution is visible in Shakib Al Hasan's player record.

Melbourne, 2015

The quarter-final of the 2015 World Cup is the match Bangladesh has never accepted.

India won it comfortably enough on the scoreboard. What Bangladesh objected to was the umpiring, and specifically a waist-high full toss to Rohit Sharma that was not called a no-ball when he was caught, along with a boundary catch judgement that went India's way. Rohit went on to make a century.

The complaint was made at the highest possible level. Mustafa Kamal, then the ICC president and a former head of the Bangladesh board, publicly criticised the officiating during the tournament, was not given the role of presenting the trophy at the final, and resigned from the presidency afterwards. It was an extraordinary sequence: the ICC's own president accusing the ICC's umpires of favouring one member.

Bangladeshi supporters treat the match as theft. Neutral observers generally hold that the errors were real but that Bangladesh were losing anyway. The match and its aftermath are covered in detail in the guide to the 2015 World Cup quarter-final.

Three finishes

Between 2016 and 2018 Bangladesh lost three matches to India in a way that has shaped how the fixture feels.

At the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore during the 2016 World Twenty20, Bangladesh needed a small number of runs from the last three balls with wickets in hand. Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah were both caught attempting boundaries, the last man was run out, and India won by one run.

In the Nidahas Trophy final at Colombo in March 2018, India needed to win off the last ball and Dinesh Karthik hit a six to do it. Bangladesh had led that match for most of its length.

In the Asia Cup final in Dubai in September 2018, Bangladesh made 222 with Liton Das scoring 121, his first one-day international century. India chased it down for the loss of seven wickets, reaching the target off the final ball of the fiftieth over.

Three finals or near-finals, three defeats in the last over, all against the same opponent. No side has done more damage to Bangladeshi cricketing confidence, and the accumulation of those three matches explains why a Bangladesh crowd expects the worst against India regardless of the situation.

The one-day series at home

Bangladesh's most consistent success against India has come in bilateral fifty-over cricket in Bangladesh, and there have been two clear instances.

In June 2015, Bangladesh won the first two matches of a three-match series at Mirpur — by 79 runs and then by six wickets — and took the series. It was Bangladesh's first bilateral one-day series win over India. The bowling was done largely by a nineteen-year-old left-arm seamer, Mustafizur Rahman, playing his first international matches, whose cutters India had no answer to across those two games.

In December 2022 Bangladesh won again, two-one. The first match at Mirpur was won by one wicket after Bangladesh had been 136 for nine chasing 187, with Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Mustafizur Rahman adding 51 for the last wicket. Three days later Mehidy made an unbeaten hundred, his first in one-day cricket, and Bangladesh won by five runs. India took the third match at Chattogram by 227 runs, which is a fair indication of the underlying gap.

Both series were won at Mirpur, on slow low surfaces where India's batting has repeatedly struggled. The ground is described in the guide to Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.

The Test ledger

Format	Record
Tests	India have won every completed match; two have been drawn
ODIs	India lead by roughly four to one
T20Is	India have won all but one meeting

The Test position has not improved with time. India won both matches of the 2022-23 series in Bangladesh, at Chattogram by 188 runs and at Mirpur by three wickets after a fourth-innings scare. In September 2024 India won at Chennai by 280 runs, with Ravichandran Ashwin scoring a century and taking six wickets in an innings, and at Kanpur by seven wickets in a match reduced by rain to little more than two days of play. The Twenty20 series that followed in October 2024 went to India three-nil, by margins of seven wickets, 86 runs and 133 runs.

That last sequence is the honest current state of the fixture outside Mirpur. India's second-choice players beat Bangladesh's first-choice players comfortably.

Scheduling, money and 2026

The structural complaint from Dhaka is about fixtures. India plays Bangladesh rarely and briefly: two-Test series, short white-ball trips, and long gaps. Bangladesh has never hosted India for a full-length tour of the kind England or Australia receive.

The reason is the one every smaller board gives. India's home fixtures against England and Australia generate the broadcast revenue that funds the game, and a Bangladesh series does not, so it gets the weeks nobody else wants. The financial architecture behind that is set out in the guides to BCCI structure and BCB structure.

Relations then deteriorated beyond cricket. Following a breakdown in relations between the two governments in late 2025, Bangladesh withdrew from the 2026 T20 World Cup staged in India. Whatever the diplomatic merits, a Test nation missing a global tournament over a bilateral political dispute is a serious event, and it has left the cricketing relationship in its worst state since Bangladesh gained Test status.

Where it stands

The fixture is not close and the players know it. What sustains it is the pair of results in 2007 and 2012, the two home one-day series wins, and the certainty in Dhaka that on a slow Mirpur pitch India can be beaten by anybody.

What would change it is a Test win, and there is no obvious route to one. Bangladesh's spinners are good enough to trouble India's batters at home, but India's own spinners are better and their batting is deeper, and the two-Test series format gives Bangladesh no room to recover from a bad first week.

Bangladesh's other regional fixtures, where the records are more encouraging, are covered in the guides to the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka rivalry and the Bangladesh and Pakistan rivalry. The rest of the game here sits on the cricket in Bangladesh hub.

Sources and method

This page rests on published Test, one-day international and Twenty20 international scorecards and series records for matches between the two countries, ICC records for the World Cup and World Twenty20 fixtures described, Asian Cricket Council records for the Asia Cup matches, and contemporaneous reporting of the 2015 quarter-final and its administrative aftermath. Individual scores, bowling figures and margins are as recorded in the official scorecards. Head-to-head totals change with every series and are described in general terms rather than as fixed counts. Nothing on this page is computed from our own datasets.