Dhaka: Bangladesh will face host Sri Lanka in first T20I of their two-match series under floodlight at R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo on Tuesday evening.

The match will begin at 7:30pm, Bangladesh time, on an unusually hard surface might offered some help to the fast bowlers early on.

In their tour, Bangladesh bounced back brilliantly to level the three-Test series 1-1 and then the ODIs also ending with the same margin against Sri Lanka.

Now the Tigers have their batting firepower—Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan have more than 1,000 T20I runs with 1202 and 1159 runs respectively where no other one in both squads.

Experienced Mushfiqur Rahim, Mahmudullah Riyad, Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Rahman are the other batting force.

The Tigers have no worry to decorate batting line up, but likely to consider the inclusion of uncapped fast-bowling all-rounder Mohammad Saifuddin to make quick breakthrough.

Mashrafe and Taskin Ahmed have been among the wickets recently, while Mehedi Hasan has taken to limited-overs cricket as he did in Tests. Left-arm spinner Sunzamul Islam is another option available to the visitors.

On the other camp, Kusal Mendis has passed his fitness test and will be available for this match. If Kusal would slot back into the XI, Sri Lnaka might have to choose between fast bowlers Vikum Sanjaya and Nuwan Kulasekara.

Apart from this, most of the line-up will be same to the one that played against Australia in February. Left-arm wristspinner Lakshan Sandakan is expected to regain his T20I place, after missing the latter part of the ODI series against Bangladesh.

Mashrafe must aim to lead the Tigers to be competitive all the way in a familiar condition to get back their form, after suffering a 3-0 clean sweep in their last T20I series away home against New Zealand in January last.

Regarding Sri Lanka’s poor record at R Premadasa Stadium, the hosts have won just one T20I in 11 outings, when Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza has been asked, he said, ‘These things don’t really matter much. When we played the decider against England in Chittagong (last October), we lost despite having a good record there.’

Bangladesh registered the only victory against Sri Lanka in their last meeting at home in the Twenty20 format in the Asia Cup 2016. Since September 2007, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka played five T20Is where the letter side secured four victories.