Pallekele to host two Sri Lanka-Bangladesh Tests starting April 21

Bangladesh's two-Test tour of Sri Lanka is set to begin on April 21, with both matches scheduled to be played in Pallekele.

The series had originally been slated to be played last October, but was postponed after Sri Lanka's health authorities insisted that the touring team needed to spend 14 days in quarantine, to which neither the Bangladesh Cricket Board nor the Bangladesh players agreed.

Sri Lanka's government has since relaxed their quarantine rules for international cricket teams, however, so long as those teams have entered a bio-secure bubble ahead of their departure. Bangladesh are likely to arrive on April 14 and are due to play an intra-squad warm-up in Katunayake on April 17 and 18. The series is almost certain to be played behind closed doors.

This would be the third major men's cricket event Sri Lanka hosts since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with last year's Lanka Premier League, and the England Test series in January having come before. On both those occasions, players were allowed to undergo only a brief quarantine, before they began training with their teammates several days after arrival. No international women's matches have been hosted in Sri Lanka during this time.

The second Bangladesh Test will begin on April 29, with a three-day break in between the games. Bangladesh drew their last Test series in Sri Lanka 1-1, winning the second Test of their 2017 tour, at the P Sara Oval in Colombo.