Toss Ireland won the toss and chose to bowl against Bangladesh
Ireland's stand-in captain
Paul Stirling decided to bowl first against Bangladesh in the first T20I in Chattogram. He said that their lack of knowledge about the conditions prompted the decision. His counterpart
Shakib Al Hasan said he would have bowled first too, as they didn't know what a good score on that pitch would be.
The home side made one like-for-like change: they brought in left-arm spinner
Nasum Ahmed in place of Tanvir Islam, who had made his international debut in the third T20I against England two weeks back.
However, Ireland had to make a host of changes from their last T20I, which came against Zimbabwe in January. Stirling replaced the rested Andrew Balbirnie both as captain and opener, while
Lorcan Tucker,
Gareth Delany,
Craig Young and
Graham Hume also came into the XI to take the place of Stephen Doheny, Neil Rock and Barry McCarthy.
The sides had
last met in a T20I during the T20 World Cup in 2016, although that match was rained out.
Bangladesh: 1 Litton Das (wk), 2 Rony Talukdar, 3 Najmul Hossain Shanto, 4 Shakib Al Hasan (capt), 5 Towhid Hridoy, 6 Shamim Hossain, 7 Mehidy Hasan Miraz, 8 Nasum Ahmed, 9 Taskin Ahmed, 10 Hasan Mahmud, 11 Mustafizur Rahman
Ireland: 1 Paul Stirling (capt), 2 Ross Adair, 3 Lorcan Tucker (wk), 4 Harry Tector, 5 Curtis Campher, 6 George Dockrell, 7 Gareth Delany, 8 Mark Adair, 9 Craig Young, 10 Graham Hume, 11 Ben White