Bangladesh v Pakistan: From 1999 to Rawalpindi

Dhaka staged Test cricket for eighteen years before Bangladesh existed. Between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s, the ground now known as Bangabandhu National Stadium hosted Tests played by Pakistan, and cricketers from what was then East Pakistan were selected — rarely, and to persistent local complaint — for Pakistan sides. The 1971 Liberation War ended that arrangement and everything else about it.

Cricket between the two countries therefore begins from an unusual position: not two strangers meeting, but a separation. Bangladesh's very first one-day international, in the 1986 Asia Cup at Moratuwa, was against Pakistan. For the next decade and more the results were what you would expect of a side without Test status playing one of the strongest teams in the world.

What followed has been the most volatile of Bangladesh's rivalries, because it has produced the country's single most consequential cricket result and, twenty-five years later, its most complete one.

Northampton, 31 May 1999

Bangladesh went to the 1999 World Cup as an associate side and won two matches. The first, against Scotland, was expected. The second was not.

At the County Ground in Northampton, Bangladesh batted first and made 223 for nine. Pakistan, who would reach the final of that tournament, were bowled out for 161 in 44.3 overs. Bangladesh won by 62 runs. Khaled Mahmud took the man of the match award.

The result was so far outside expectation that it generated immediate and unfounded suggestions of fixing, which nothing ever substantiated and which Bangladeshi cricket has resented ever since. What it did in Dhaka was different and lasting: it created the political case for Test status. Bangladesh finished fifth in their group with two wins from five, and within a year the ICC had granted them full membership. The whole episode is set out in the guide to the 1999 World Cup breakthrough.

Sixteen years of nothing

Northampton was followed by the longest drought in Bangladesh's fixture list. From the 1999 World Cup until 2015, Bangladesh did not beat Pakistan in a one-day international at all.

That is a striking sequence given that in the same period Bangladesh beat India, Australia and South Africa in fifty-over cricket at least once each. Pakistan simply kept winning, home and away, in bilateral series and in Asia Cups, often comfortably.

The Test record over the same period was worse. Pakistan's bowling — reverse swing on dry subcontinental pitches, which is the one condition Bangladesh's own attack could not replicate — repeatedly took Bangladesh apart. The tradition behind it is described in the guide to reverse swing in Pakistan.

The 2012 Asia Cup final

The nearest miss came in Dhaka in March 2012, and it remains the most painful match in Bangladesh's history.

Bangladesh had beaten India in the group stage, chasing 290 at Mirpur with Tamim Iqbal making 70 and Shakib Al Hasan taking the man of the match award, and had qualified for their first Asia Cup final ahead of India on head-to-head. In the final on 22 March, Pakistan made 236 for nine. Bangladesh reached 234 for eight from their fifty overs and lost by two runs.

Shakib made 68 and was player of the tournament. Shahid Afridi took the match award. The images that survive are of Bangladeshi players sitting on the outfield afterwards, several of them in tears, in a stadium that had been full for a week. Shakib later described it as the hardest defeat of his career, and the country has treated it since as the day Bangladesh became a side that could reach finals but not win them — a pattern examined in the guide to Bangladesh in Asia Cup finals.

April 2015

Pakistan toured Bangladesh in April 2015 and lost every limited-overs match on the trip.

Match	Result
1st ODI	Bangladesh won by 79 runs (329 for 6, Pakistan 250)
2nd ODI	Bangladesh won by 7 wickets
3rd ODI	Bangladesh won by 8 wickets
Only T20I	Bangladesh won by 7 wickets

The first match ended the sixteen-year wait and the series produced Bangladesh's first bilateral series win over Pakistan in any format, and their first one-day whitewash of them. Tamim Iqbal was the outstanding batter of the series.

The context is worth stating because it changes how the result reads. Bangladesh had just reached the quarter-finals of the 2015 World Cup, described in the guide to the 2015 World Cup quarter-final, and Pakistan had gone out of the same tournament in disorder. Bangladesh then beat India and South Africa in home ODI series in the months that followed. The Pakistan whitewash was the first instalment of the best year Bangladesh has had in fifty-over cricket, not an isolated upset.

The Tests that followed on the same tour went the other way. Bangladesh made 555 for six in the second innings of the first Test and still could not force a result after Pakistan's 628; Pakistan won the second Test by 328 runs. The gap in the long format had not closed at all.

Rawalpindi, August and September 2024

It closed in the space of a fortnight, at one ground, in the most emphatic result of Bangladesh's Test history.

Bangladesh toured Pakistan for two Tests, both at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium. They had never beaten Pakistan in a Test. They won both.

In the first, played from 21 to 25 August, Mushfiqur Rahim scored 191 and Bangladesh won by ten wickets. Mehidy Hasan Miraz took four for 21 as Pakistan were dismissed for 146 in their second innings, their lowest total against Bangladesh.

In the second, from 30 August to 3 September, Liton Das made 138 from a position where the innings had collapsed. Mehidy took five for 61 and Hasan Mahmud five for 43, each his first Test five-wicket haul. Bangladesh's pace bowlers took all ten Pakistani wickets in the second innings, which had never happened in a Bangladesh Test before. Bangladesh won by six wickets and took the series two-nil.

Mehidy was player of the series with ten wickets. It was Bangladesh's first Test win over Pakistan, their first Test series win in Pakistan, and their first away Test series win against a side of that standing since the West Indies in 2009.

Two things about it deserve emphasis. The first is that it was a whitewash away from home, in conditions that had historically been Pakistan's strongest, and there was nothing fortunate about either match. The second is that the seam bowling did the work. Bangladesh Test wins had almost always been built on spin at Mirpur; Rawalpindi was won by Hasan Mahmud and the seam group described in the guide to Bangladesh's fast bowling growth.

Abu Dhabi, September 2018

The result that gets least attention and matters most to how the fixture developed came in the Super Four stage of the 2018 Asia Cup, at Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi on 26 September.

Bangladesh made 239 and bowled Pakistan out for 202 for nine, winning by 37 runs. It was their first win over Pakistan in an Asia Cup one-day international, which is a narrower claim than it sounds: the two countries had been meeting in that tournament since Bangladesh's first appearance in the 1980s, and Pakistan had won every time.

The victory put Bangladesh into the final, and it eliminated Pakistan from a tournament they were expected to contest. Bangladesh then lost the final to India off the last ball. Beating Pakistan in a knockout-relevant match, on neutral ground, without the help of a Mirpur surface, was a different kind of result from the 2015 whitewash and a better indicator of where the side had reached.

The crowds, and the awkwardness

There is an aspect of this fixture that Bangladeshi cricket discusses openly and outsiders rarely notice: a section of Bangladeshi supporters has historically followed Pakistan.

The reasons are contested and overlapping — a long period in which Bangladesh had no competitive side of its own to follow, the appeal of Wasim Akram and Shahid Afridi to a generation of Dhaka teenagers, and religious and cultural affinities that some supporters weigh heavily. Pakistan flags in Bangladeshi crowds have been a recurring flashpoint, and there have been arrests and public arguments about them.

The counter-current is at least as strong. For a substantial part of the population the 1971 war is not history but family memory, and support for Pakistan in a cricket match is regarded as a genuine offence rather than a preference. That tension is a real part of the atmosphere at a Bangladesh-Pakistan match in Dhaka, and it is why the fixture generates heat out of proportion to the head-to-head record. The wider culture of Bangladeshi support sits on the cricket in Bangladesh hub.

Where it stands

Pakistan remains well ahead across all three formats. They have won the overwhelming majority of the Tests, the great majority of the one-day internationals, and most of the Twenty20 meetings. Bangladesh's two Test wins both came in that fortnight at Rawalpindi.

But the direction of travel is not in dispute. Bangladesh has now beaten Pakistan in a Test series away from home, and the sides have played several closely contested short-format series in recent years. Pakistan's own domestic instability during this period — repeated restructuring of its first-class competition, described in the guide to the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy — has narrowed a gap that Bangladesh was also closing from its own side.

The two boards also need each other. Pakistan spent years unable to host cricket at home, and Bangladesh was among the countries willing to tour when the fixture list was thin. The rest of Bangladesh's international record is on the cricket in Bangladesh hub, and the comparable fixtures against the other neighbours are covered in the guides to the Bangladesh and India rivalry and Bangladesh's wins over New Zealand.

Sources and method

This page rests on published Test, one-day international and Twenty20 international scorecards for matches between the two countries, ICC records for the 1999 World Cup, Asian Cricket Council records for the 2012 Asia Cup, and the official series records for the 2015 tour of Bangladesh and the 2024 tour of Pakistan. Individual scores, bowling figures and margins are as recorded in those scorecards. Head-to-head aggregates change with every series and are described here in general terms. The account of crowd loyalties reflects widely reported and publicly discussed behaviour rather than any survey, and nothing on this page is computed from our own datasets.