Bangladesh arrived here Thursday to play four warm-up one-day internationals against Zimbabwe ahead of next month's World Cup. Bangladesh hold an 8-2 match advantage and have leap-frogged Zimbabwe from the bottom of the ICC rankings with 34 points against 30. And there seems little reason to believe Bangladesh won't increase the gap between them after games on February 4, 6, 9 and 10. They beat Zimbabwe 5-0 in Bangladesh just recently and Zimbabwe have now lost 12 consecutive ODIs. Their "B" team, which was not far removed from an "A" side, were comfortably beaten 3-0 by a South African XI in Bulawayo a few days ago. Zimbabwe did edge Bangladesh 3-2 here in August last year but it could easily have gone the other way without some spectacular hitting by Brendan Taylor who struck 17 runs off the final of the fifth game to snatch the series by a whisker. Bangladesh will hold a practice session on Friday to recuperate from their travels and acclimatize itself to Harare's 1,500m elevation above sea level. Coach David Whatmore said: "It was a long and tiring journey here and irritating to say the least with the loss of luggage. But it won't take long to get ourselves ready for the series. We need to consolidate our advantage." Bangladesh will be without Khaled Mashud who failed a fitness test and his place behind the stumps will be taken by Mushfiqur Rahim. Bangladesh squad: Habibul Bashar (capt), Shahriar Nafeez, Affab Ahmed, Mohammad Rafique, Mashrafe Mortaza, Tushmar Imran, Mohammad Ashraful, Shakib al Hasan, Mehrab Hossain, Shahadat Hussain, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mohammad Shariff, Tabash Baisya, Abdur Razzak, Tamim Iqbal Khan. Coach David Whatmore. Zimbabwe held a full practice match Wednesday and are due to announce either a 16 or 18-man squad Friday, according to selector Kenyon Ziehl.

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