DHAKA, Feb 21: South Africa will not underestimate Bangladesh despite their woeful Test record, skipper Graeme Smith insisted on Thursday as his team prepared for their first match here.

Bangladesh have won just one of their 51 Tests – against minnows Zimbabwe – and have been thrashed by huge margins in the past four outings against the Proteas.

But they showed flashes of brilliance in a three-day warm-up game, prompting Smith and his men to put on their thinking caps ahead of the first Test at the Sher-e-Bangla Mirpur Stadium in the capital on Friday.

“It will be a new challenge for us, we have to give them the respect they deserve,” Smith told a press conference. “It is always a great challenge to excel in the subcontinent; you have to earn your every win here.

“We are trying to gather as much information on the players as we can as we do not know them enough because we don’t get to play them as often as we do against some other teams.

Teams:

BANGLADESH (from): Mohammad Ashraful (captain), Mashrafe Mortaza, Abdur Razzak, Aftab Ahmed, Habibul Bashar, Junaid Siddique, Mohammad Rafique, Mushfiqur Rahim, Rajin Saleh, Sajidul Islam, Shahadat Hossain, Shahriar Nafees, Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal.