'We must dominate Bangladesh', says Streak

Heath Streak, Zimbabwe's captain, is looking for his team to dominate Bangladesh during their two-Test series, which starts on Thursday.

Bangladesh have yet to win a Test after 26 matches, losing them all bar one, which they drew against Zimbabwe in November 2001. "Bangladesh are a very improved side under Dav Whatmore, but we've been playing good cricket and there's no reason why we shouldn't dominate and win both the Test and one-day series," Streak said. "I hope our guys rise to the occasion for this series, not just when we play the big guns. It's important that we learn to win, and part of that is beating teams like Bangladesh."

Zimbabwe have just returned from a tough VB Series against Australia and India, where they lost seven of their eight matches, with the other washed out. "We were competitive in a few games and we managed to run them to the wire a couple of times, even after losing Craig Wishart and Mark Vermeulen to injuries," Streak said. "We were disappointed that we couldn't pull off a couple of victories having got ourselves into positions where we could have.

"But India and Australia are the two best sides in world cricket, and the guys took a lot of confidence out of the fact that we were able to be competitive with a very young side and missing a couple of guys."

Streak added that Zimbabwe would attempt to reverse the role they played in Australia. "They'll be asked to play under the sort of pressure we were under against India and Australia," he said. "We've got some good allrounders, and that allows us to have bowling options. Our middle order has managed to pull us out of trouble and to put us in strong positions. We've got guys like Andy Blignaut and Ray Price coming in at No. 9 and No. 10 respectively, and they are by no means monkeys with the bat."

Zimbabwe 1 Heath Streak (capt), 2 Tatenda Taibu (wk), 3 Trevor Gripper, 4 Dion Ebrahim, 5 Stuart Carlisle, 6 Grant Flower, 7 Sean Ervine, 8 Andy Blignaut, 9 Gavin Ewing, 10 Raymond Price, 11 Douglas Hondo.

Bangladesh (from) Habibul Bashar (capt), Mohammad Ashraful, Tareq Aziz, Tapash Baisya, Anwar Hossain, Shahriar Hossain, Manjural Islam, Alamgir Kabir, Alok Kapali, Khaled Mashud (wk), Mohammad Rafique, Mushfiqur Rahman, Rajin Saleh, Al Sahariar, Hannan Sarkar.