South Africa will use their only warm-up match of the Bangladesh tour on Friday to get some confidence going ahead of the T20 series which starts on Sunday, reports Kobus Pretorius.

South Africa play a Bangladesh Cricket Board XI on Friday as the only preparation for the month long tour. Some players have been off for a month while others have played county cricket in England.

It has been widely recognised by the Proteas camp that the Bangladesh team they will face on this tour has improved significantly over the last six months.

‘We are not taking this lightly,’ JP Duminy told a press conference ahead of Friday’s warm-up.

‘For us the tour starts on Friday, not Sunday. We need to make sure we get the best out of the warm-up and get some confidence.

‘We are no strangers to these kinds of conditions, especially the heat. We’ll just have to make sure we manage ourselves properly in training.’

Duminy said he had noticed a few differences to the current Bangladesh team that differed from what he had experienced in the past.

‘They have a quiet confidence about them which has been built around this team. We’re not thinking it’s going to be a walkover. It’s a new season with new goals so we must make sure we reach those goals. We want to improve our T20 ranking.

‘Bangladesh are going to come out fighting and we need to counter that.’

Meanwhile, South Africa had to apologise to the Bangladesh military on Thursday for using a drone at a practice session in Dhaka and breaching national security ahead of the start of their tour.

Bangladesh cricket authorities ordered a halt to the use of the drone which had been taking photos of the South African players during the Proteas’ first practice on Wednesday, reports AFP.

‘The Proteas’ behind-the-scenes TV crew brought the drone over to try and obtain creative views and images to use for our YouTube channel,’ team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.

‘We were unaware of the strict security protocols with regards to the Bangladesh airspace and have subsequently stopped using the device.

‘We do apologise to the Bangladesh military and security forces for any inconvenience this may have caused,’ he said in an email.