India vs Bangladesh

Plain head-to-head numbers, which are heavily stacked in India's favour, won't do justice to the India-Bangladesh rivalry on the cricket field. It has turned out to be one of the most fiercely contested and eagerly awaited matches both on and off the field in the last decade or so. India were always the 'big brother' to Bangladesh in every sense. BCCI played an influential role in Bangladesh getting Test status and becoming a full ICC member in 2000. Bangladesh's maiden Test was also against India in the same year. But purely on cricketing skills, there was always a big gulf between the two. Bangladesh beat India for the first time in 2004 in an ODI in Dhaka but the real change of momentum came in the 2007 World Cup when a young Bangladesh side stunned heavyweights India in the group stage. So telling was that defeat that India failed to advance to the next stage. Four years later, in the opening match of the 2011 World Cup, the tension was there for everyone to see. India won the match comfortably but a rivalry between Virat Kohli and Rubel Hossain was born which continued till the next edition of the World Cup in Australia. In the same tournament in 2015, the social media war between fans of both India and Bangladesh first came to light. It was due to a debatable no-ball call which gave life to Rohit Sharma, eventually paving the way for Bangladesh's loss in their maiden appearance in a World Cup quarter-final. Three months later, Mustafizur Rahman got a full-strength Indian side in a tangle as Bangladesh registered their maiden series win against India at home. The rivalry was never the same. Since then, whenever India have faced Bangladesh, the matches have been far more evenly-contested and the tension among fans evident than ever. They beat India in another ODI series in 2022 and came very close to their maiden Test victory only to be denied by a resurgent Shreyas Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin who snatched victory for India from the jaws of defeat in Mirpur. India still enjoy an upper hand over their neighbours but Bangladesh have come tantalisingly close to beating India on multiple important occasions like the T20 World Cup Super 10 stage in 2016, the Asia Cup final in 2018, and the group stage of the 2022 T20 World Cup.