Sylhet International Cricket Stadium Guide

Almost every cricket ground in Bangladesh sits inside a city, hemmed in by traffic and concrete. The Sylhet International Cricket Stadium does not. It is in the north-east corner of the country, in the tea-growing district, with hills on the horizon and a natural hillock at one end of the ground that has been turfed and left as a grass bank for spectators to sit on. It is the only ground in Bangladesh anyone describes as beautiful, and the description is deserved.

It is also a working international venue with a Test record, a set of unusual statistical entries, and a divisional side that won the national first-class championship for the first time in a quarter of a century in 2024-25.

The ground itself

The stadium was built in 2007 as a divisional cricket ground and substantially expanded in 2013 in order to stage matches at the 2014 World Twenty20. It seats about eighteen and a half thousand. The architect was Masudur Rahman Khan.

Its distinguishing feature is the green gallery: a grass embankment on a natural hillock, the first of its kind in the country, which functions as a terrace and gives the ground its character. Anyone who has watched cricket from a bank at an English outground or in New Zealand will recognise the arrangement. In Bangladesh, where the other international venues are bowls of concrete seating, it is unique.

Location	Sylhet, north-east Bangladesh
Capacity	About 18,500
Built	2007, expanded 2013
First men's T20I	17 March 2014, Ireland v Zimbabwe
First men's Test	3-6 November 2018, Bangladesh v Zimbabwe
First men's ODI	14 December 2018, Bangladesh v West Indies
First women's T20I	23 March 2014, Australia v New Zealand

The order of those dates is the interesting part. Sylhet staged international Twenty20 cricket four years before it staged a Test, and the first internationals played there did not involve Bangladesh at all — Ireland against Zimbabwe in the qualifying round of the 2014 World Twenty20. It is the only Bangladeshi ground whose international history begins with two visiting teams.

The tournaments

Sylhet's expansion was driven by tournament hosting and it has done a lot of it. The ground staged matches at the 2014 World Twenty20 and at the 2014 Women's World Twenty20, and hosted the 2022 Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup. It has also been used for age-group World Cup cricket.

One of the 2014 matches produced a record that still stands out. Netherlands, batting at Sylhet, reached a hundred in 6.6 overs and 150 in 10.3 overs — the fastest team hundred and fastest team 150 in Twenty20 international cricket. That happened on a ground now better known for slow, low surfaces, which is a reminder that the square at Sylhet has behaved differently at different points in its life.

The Test Zimbabwe won

Sylhet's first Test, from 3 to 6 November 2018, was against Zimbabwe. Bangladesh lost it by 151 runs.

Zimbabwe made 282, Sean Williams scoring 88, and bowled Bangladesh out for 143. Zimbabwe's second innings reached 181 and Bangladesh were dismissed for 169, Brandon Mavuta taking four for 21. Taijul Islam took six for 108 and five for 62 for Bangladesh — eleven wickets in the match, his first ten-wicket haul in Tests — and finished on the losing side.

For Zimbabwe it was their first away Test win since 2001 and only the third in their history. For Bangladesh it was among the worst home results of the modern era, and it happened in the inaugural Test at a brand-new venue with a full house.

Bangladesh won the second Test of that series comfortably at Mirpur, by 218 runs, with Mushfiqur Rahim making 219 not out — becoming the first wicketkeeper to score two Test double centuries — and Brendan Taylor making 110 and 106 not out in a losing cause. That match is part of the record of the Mirpur ground rather than this one, but the pair of results together says something about how variable Bangladesh were at home in that period. The general pattern of home performance is examined in the guide to Bangladesh's home advantage.

Liton Das, 176

The ground's most notable batting performance came in March 2020, when Liton Das made 176 in a one-day international against Zimbabwe — the highest individual score by a Bangladesh batter in the format.

Liton is the recurring figure in the country's best individual innings of the last decade, having also made 121 in a losing Asia Cup final, an innings covered in the guide to Bangladesh in Asia Cup finals. The 176 at Sylhet is the more complete performance and much the less discussed, because it came against Zimbabwe in a bilateral series rather than in a final.

Sylhet Division, and the title that took 24 years

The stadium is the home ground of Sylhet Division, founded in 1999 when Bangladesh's first-class competition was reorganised on divisional lines.

For most of that time Sylhet were the also-rans of the National Cricket League. They won a one-day competition in 2001-02 and then nothing for more than two decades. In 2024-25 they won the National Cricket League for the first time.

The side that did it was built on seam bowling, which is the least Bangladeshi way to win a domestic first-class title. Ebadot Hossain and Khaled Ahmed, both internationals, led the attack. Ebadot's own Test career — including the spell at Mount Maunganui that produced Bangladesh's first Test win in New Zealand — is part of the story told in the guide to Bangladesh's fast bowling growth, and it is not a coincidence that the two best red-ball seamers the country has produced recently came out of the same division.

Sylhet's earlier internationals include Rajin Saleh, Tapash Baisya, Enamul Haque Jr and Alok Kapali, who took the first Test hat-trick by a Bangladesh bowler. Mushfiqur Rahim, the most-capped Bangladesh cricketer of his generation, is from Sylhet. Zakir Hasan, Tanzim Hasan Sakib and Nasum Ahmed are the more recent additions — Tanzim having been part of the age-group side described in the guide to the 2020 Under-19 World Cup title.

That is a substantial production line from a division that had never won the first-class competition, and it makes the point that the honours table and the supply of international cricketers are not the same measurement.

The franchise, and its many names

Sylhet has had a team in the Bangladesh Premier League since the competition began in 2012, and it has played under a different name roughly every two seasons — Royals, Super Stars, Sixers, Thunder, Sunrisers, Strikers, Titans — following a succession of ownership changes.

The franchise has never won the tournament. Its best season was 2023, when it reached the final under Najmul Hossain Shanto, who was the leading run-scorer of the tournament with 516 and its player of the tournament, and lost to Comilla Victorians.

Seven names in a decade is a problem the league has in several cities, and it is the most concrete illustration of why franchise loyalty in Bangladesh has been slow to develop. A supporter who bought a shirt in 2012 has watched the team's identity change six times since.

Weather, season and getting there

Sylhet is the wettest part of Bangladesh, which matters for scheduling. The division sits below the hills of Meghalaya and receives extremely heavy monsoon rainfall, so the cricket season here is compressed even by Bangladeshi standards. International fixtures are scheduled in the dry winter months, and matches at the edges of that window are genuinely at risk.

The city is reachable by air and rail from Dhaka and the ground is outside the built-up centre, which makes match-day access easier than at Mirpur. Tickets for internationals are sold through the arrangements the board announces per series, and Sylhet fixtures generally fill because the ground is small and international cricket comes rarely.

The other current Test venues are described in the guides to the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium in Chattogram and the national cricket grounds guide. For the country's cricket as a whole, see the cricket in Bangladesh hub, and for the contrast between a divisional cricket culture and the capital's, the guide to cricket in Dhaka.

Sources and method

This page draws on published ground records for the Sylhet International Cricket Stadium — construction and expansion dates, capacity, architect, the green gallery, and the dates of the first men's Twenty20 international, Test and one-day international and the first women's Twenty20 international — together with the scorecards of the November 2018 Tests against Zimbabwe and the March 2020 one-day international against Zimbabwe. Sylhet Division's founding, competition record and 2024-25 title follow domestic records, and the franchise's name and ownership changes follow Bangladesh Premier League announcements. Capacity and honours counts change over time and are given approximately. No figures above are the product of our own statistical work.