Bangladesh v Sri Lanka: Nidahas, Timed Out, Tests

Bangladesh has lost far more often to Sri Lanka than to any other side it plays regularly, and the fixture is still the angriest on its calendar. That combination is unusual. Rivalries normally need parity to generate heat. This one has generated it out of a lopsided record, a series of on-field gestures, and a decision at a World Cup that neither set of players has let go.

The cricketing reason is proximity of a particular kind. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh play on similar surfaces, both rely on spin, and both produce batters who accumulate rather than dominate. Matches between them are consequently close in texture even when the results are not, and the sides know each other's players intimately from years of Asia Cups and back-to-back tours.

The human reason is that a Bangladesh side which spent two decades being patronised found, in Sri Lanka, an opponent close enough in standing to be worth resenting. Everything below follows from that.

The record, stated plainly

Sri Lanka leads in every format and the Test margin is enormous. Bangladesh has won one Test against Sri Lanka and lost more than twenty. In one-day internationals Sri Lanka has won something over three times as many meetings. Twenty20 is the closest of the three and is still in Sri Lanka's favour.

Sri Lanka has also won global trophies — a World Cup, a World Twenty20, a Champions Trophy — and Asia Cups in numbers, while Bangladesh has won none of either. That asymmetry sits underneath the fixture and is the thing Sri Lankan players reach for when the exchanges get sharp.

None of which means the matches are one-sided in play. The 2024 tour of Bangladesh, described below, produced a three-run Twenty20 result and a three-run one-day result inside a fortnight.

The 100th Test

Bangladesh's only Test win over Sri Lanka came in March 2017 at the P Sara Oval in Colombo, and it happened to be Bangladesh's hundredth Test match.

They had gone into it having lost the first Test at Galle by 259 runs, with Kusal Mendis making 194. At the P Sara Oval they did something they had almost never managed away from home: outbatted the opposition. Sri Lanka made 338; Bangladesh replied with 467. Sri Lanka's 319 in the second innings left Bangladesh 191 to win, and Tamim Iqbal saw them home with 82 not out. Bangladesh won by four wickets.

It ended a sequence of eighteen Tests against Sri Lanka without a win, spread across sixteen years. Winning your hundredth Test is a coincidence rather than an achievement, but it is the kind of coincidence a cricket culture holds onto, and Bangladesh did. The wider picture is in the history of Bangladesh cricket.

Bangladesh has not beaten Sri Lanka in a Test since, and Sri Lanka's spinners remain the most difficult examination Bangladesh's batting faces in the format — the tradition behind them is set out in the guide to Sri Lankan spin bowling.

The Nidahas Trophy

The rivalry acquired its modern temperature during a Twenty20 tri-series in Sri Lanka in March 2018.

The immediate background was a dance. A Bangladeshi left-arm spinner, Nazmul Islam, had celebrated a wicket earlier that year with a snake-charming gesture that became known as the naagin dance and spread instantly through Bangladeshi cricket. During the Nidahas Trophy, Mushfiqur Rahim performed a pointed version of it after a match-winning fifty against Sri Lanka, which Sri Lankan supporters read as mockery.

The escalation came in the final group match on 16 March. Bangladesh needed twelve from the last over to reach the final. A bouncer was not called a wide, Bangladesh's dugout erupted, and Shakib Al Hasan — the captain, and by then shirtless in the dressing-room doorway — was seen instructing his batters to walk off the field. They did not, in the end. Mahmudullah hit the runs required and Bangladesh won.

What followed was the part nobody in either country has forgotten. Bangladeshi players performed the naagin dance in the direction of the Sri Lankan fielders and the crowd, and the dressing-room celebrations broke a window. The Bangladesh Cricket Board and the players faced disciplinary consequences. Bangladesh then lost the final to India off the last ball.

Bangladeshi opinion on the episode is genuinely divided. One reading is that a side that had been pushed around for years finally pushed back, and that the celebration was the point. The other is that a national team damaged a dressing room and behaved in a way it would have condemned in an opponent. Both views are still held. The way Bangladeshi support intensified through this period is part of the wider cricket in Bangladesh story.

Dubai, September 2018

Six months later the two sides opened the Asia Cup against each other in Dubai, and Bangladesh produced the most emphatic win in the history of the fixture.

Bangladesh lost early wickets, Tamim Iqbal was injured and left the field, and the innings should have folded. Mushfiqur Rahim made 144 and Bangladesh reached 261. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 124, Mustafizur Rahman taking two for 20 in a disciplined effort with the new ball. Bangladesh won by 137 runs.

Sri Lanka went out of that tournament early. Bangladesh went on to beat Pakistan in the Super Four and reached the final, where India chased down 223 off the last ball despite Liton Das making 121, his first one-day international century. The full sequence of near-misses is covered in the guide to Bangladesh in Asia Cup finals, and Mushfiqur's place in the country's game belongs in the wider history of Bangladesh cricket.

Delhi, 6 November 2023

The single most argued-about moment between the two countries came at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in a World Cup group match.

Angelo Mathews walked out after a wicket fell, found the strap on his helmet had broken, and signalled to the boundary for a replacement. Before he had taken strike, Shakib Al Hasan appealed for timed out. The on-field umpires, Richard Illingworth and Marais Erasmus, checked the timings and upheld it. Mathews was given out without facing a ball — the first timed out dismissal in the history of international cricket.

The relevant detail, which was established afterwards, is that Mathews had exceeded the two-minute limit before the helmet issue arose, and that he had already been made aware of the timing. Shakib was asked to withdraw the appeal and declined. Bangladesh won the match.

The reaction split the game. Some former players thought Shakib had applied a law that exists for a reason and that Mathews had been careless. Others thought it was within the letter of the law and outside its spirit, and that a captain of a Test nation should have withdrawn it. Mathews himself was unambiguous about which view he took. When he later dismissed Shakib in a subsequent match, he tapped his wrist in celebration, and that gesture has followed the fixture ever since. The law itself is explained among the cricket laws every fan should know.

The gesture war, 2024

Sri Lanka toured Bangladesh in March 2024 and the wrist-tapping became a running theme of the whole trip.

The Twenty20 series went to Sri Lanka two-one, all three matches at Sylhet. The first was won by three runs after Bangladesh had made 203 chasing 206. The third turned on Nuwan Thushara taking a hat-trick and finishing with five for 20. When Sri Lanka collected the trophy, several players posed for the photograph tapping their wrists.

Bangladesh then won the one-day series two-one, all three matches at Chattogram, with two of the three decided by margins of four wickets or fewer. The second was lost by three runs; the first and third were won by six wickets and four wickets. Tanzid Hasan came in as a concussion substitute in that series and made 84, the highest score by a substitute in one-day international history. At the presentation, Mushfiqur Rahim mimed a helmet strap coming loose.

Sri Lanka had the last word in the Test series, winning at Sylhet by 328 runs and at Chattogram by 192, the second of those built on a first innings of 531 in which no batter made a century. That remains the pattern of the rivalry in three formats: Bangladesh competitive in the short ones at home, comprehensively beaten over five days.

Series or match	Result	The detail
P Sara Oval, March 2017	Bangladesh won by 4 wickets	Bangladesh's 100th Test and only Test win over Sri Lanka
Nidahas Trophy, March 2018	Bangladesh reached the final	Last-over win, the walk-off row, the naagin celebrations
Asia Cup, Dubai, September 2018	Bangladesh won by 137 runs	Mushfiqur Rahim 144 after losing Tamim to injury
World Cup, Delhi, November 2023	Bangladesh won	The first timed out dismissal in international cricket
T20 World Cup, June 2024	Bangladesh won	Their first T20 World Cup win over Sri Lanka
Bangladesh, March 2024	T20Is 2-1 SL, ODIs 2-1 BAN, Tests 2-0 SL	Three-run margins in both short formats

Why this fixture and not another

Bangladesh's rivalries with India and Pakistan carry more political weight and generate bigger audiences. Neither generates as much friction on the field, and the reason is standing.

India is too far ahead for the contest to feel like a peer relationship, and Bangladeshi anger in that fixture is directed at scheduling and administration as much as at players. Pakistan carries the history of 1971, which makes the fixture solemn as often as it makes it hostile. Sri Lanka is the neighbour Bangladesh measures itself against directly: a country of comparable size, playing comparable cricket, with a trophy cabinet Bangladesh wants and does not have.

The two sides also play each other constantly. Asia Cups, tri-series, back-to-back bilateral tours in a compressed calendar, and a shared position in the middle of the Test rankings mean the same players face each other several times a year for a decade. Familiarity of that density does not produce warmth.

Sri Lanka's own history and standing are set out in the history of Sri Lankan cricket. Bangladesh's other regional fixtures are covered in the guides to the Bangladesh and India rivalry and Bangladesh's wins over New Zealand, the Chattogram ground that staged the 2024 one-day series is described under cricket in Chattogram, and the rest of the game here sits on the cricket in Bangladesh hub.

Sources and method

This page is built from published Test, one-day international and Twenty20 international scorecards and series records for matches between the two countries, ICC records for the 2023 World Cup and 2024 T20 World Cup fixtures described, Asian Cricket Council records for the 2018 Asia Cup, and the ICC playing conditions relating to the timed out law. The account of the Nidahas Trophy episode and the subsequent gestures follows contemporaneous reporting and the boards' own statements. Head-to-head aggregates change with each series and are described in general terms rather than as fixed counts. Nothing on this page is computed from our own datasets.