England all-rounder Chris Woakes said that he was excited to feature in the first-ever bilateral T20I against Bangladesh when they encounter the hosts in the opener of three Twenty20 internationals at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium on Thursday.
Since the inception of T20Is back in 2006, Bangladesh played a lone tie against the world champions in the last edition of the ICC T20 World Cup held in Australia.
However, they have yet to play a bilateral series in the shortest version of cricket, and this is going to be the first ever bilateral T20I series since the last T20 World Cup.
‘Yeah, really excited. It's a great opportunity for us to hopefully lay down a marker again as world champions. We haven't played a series since we won that World Cup,’ said Woakes on Wednesday in the pre-match press conference at the ZACS.
The 34-year-old also acknowledged that playing against Bangladesh in their condition would be a challenging task.
‘So again, a challenge for us in these conditions where it's exciting to play here against a very good Bangladesh side.’
Bangladesh has included some exciting newcomers such as Rony Talukdar, Shamim Hossain, Rejaur Rahman Raja, and Tanvir Islam alongside Najmul Hossain Shanto, Afifi Hossain, and Mehiddy Hasan Miraz in order to form a fresh T20I side ahead of the approaching showpiece competition in 2024 followed by the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 in the West Indies and USA.
The right hander also admitted that playing against the new faces might be a threat for them.
‘Yeah, I think so. I mean, whenever you come up against new guys and guys that haven't, you haven't really seen before and have performed well in their local tournament, in the BPL, they're coming in with a lot of confidence.’
'So yeah, I think when you come up against guys you haven't seen much of, sometimes that can be quite tricky as a side. You know, a guy a lot of times from a bowler’s point of view, if you haven't seen a guy play, he can get away from you. He can get to 20-30 before you realize what his strengths are,’ he added.
