Australia to raise the roof against run-shy Bangladesh

Australia are bullish they will have the upper hand in their opening Super Eight match against a Bangladesh side whose captain Najmul Hossain Shanto has implored his batters to lift after a rocky run to begin their T20 World Cup campaign.

Bangladesh will kickstart the Super Eight stage against favourite Australia on Friday at 6.30am (Bangladesh Time).

The Sir Viv Richards Stadium has been one of the Caribbean's bouncier venues through the tournament so far, though a wicket block juiced up by the island's recent wet weather could lose some of its bite when it hosts its second match in as many days after South Africa take on the United States on Wednesday.

The Australians reacquainted themselves with the island's sultry weather on Tuesday as they pushed on with their training session at Coolidge and more deafening were the bangs from balls landing on the grandstand's roof, showering those sitting underneath with falling debris, though Tim David laughed those were in fact the mishits.

"It's about hitting over the roof. That's the goal," David, who finished off Scotland with a final-over six in Australia's last group-stage match quoted in Cricket.com.au. "If it hits the roof it's disappointing," smiling David added.

They are the kind of blows Bangladesh are desperate to see more of from their own batting line-up.

Shanto's men admittedly played two games at the spin-friendly St Vincent ground and one on the inconsistent New York pitch in a Group D dogfight with Sri Lanka, Netherlands and Nepal to qualify as second seeds behind South Africa.

Bangladesh's only recent success in their rare meetings against the Aussies came in a five-game bilateral series in Dhaka three years ago on equally difficult batting surfaces. In nine World Cup matches (ODI and T20) they have never beaten Australia.

Rubber-wristed left-arm quick Mustafizur Rahman (averaging just 7.71 with the ball this tournament) bowls world cricket's best cutters and leads an attack that must fire if they stand a chance of knocking Australia off course in their pursuit of a T20 trophy to add to their ODI and Test crowns.

"The advantage of playing on these surfaces is this one is a lot truer (than others)," opening batter David Warner said of Antigua. "Their lengths may have been pulled back a little bit … if you bowl those lengths that they've been bowling, they're going to sit up and they're going to be nice (to face).

"But Bangladesh are a good team, we've played against them a fair bit. We understand their game plan. They've got some good bowling obviously – Mustafizur heads the attack.

"On this surface that style of ball he bowls might not turn as much as what it has been in the past. We know what we're going to come up against, it's just about making the most of a decent wicket that we felt it was against Namibia."

Captain Shanto has won praise for marshalling Bangladesh to three wins out of four despite his team posting more than 125 just once.

Bangladesh are renowned for their production line of left-arm spinners – star orthodox spinning allrounder Shakib Al Hasan, still a fixture in the side, is their greatest ever player – but their eagerness to unearth wrist-spinners has extended to firing domestic coaches who refuse to give them significant match time.

Rishad has been a beneficiary of the push and the 21-year-old has paid Bangladesh back with seven wickets at 14.57 for the tournament. Another accurate spell could trouble the Aussies, having somehow faced just one frontline leg-spinner (England's Adil Rashid) for the whole tournament.

Encouraging Rishad will have been Rashid's dismantling of Oman in Antigua where he took 4-11, finding considerable turn to show the venue is not necessarily always pace-friendly.

"I don't think anyone in our team will have played against him," David said of Rishad, "so we're going to take him on."