A mystery called Bangladesh cricket

By Rajadhyax

Understanding cricket in Bangladesh is not really rocket science but it is still perplexing all the same. Spectators in the country get a roller coaster ride through some of the biggest troughs and crests that a cricket team has ever seen. On their day they win against big teams like Australia or Pakistan and on others, get in to serious trouble against minnows like Holland or Ireland too. Their recent rise in ODIs is remarkable; their Test match results are up-and-down while their T20 performance is yet to catch fire. One doesn’t know where to place the team in terms of consistency of performance?

Bangladesh was granted the Test status in the year 2000 and they played their first Test against India in Dhaka. Since then they have not won a single Test series against the ‘biggies’ on home ground or abroad while their total Test match wins are also meagre. On the other hand they won fourteen out of the last nineteen ODIs they played (before the Tri-Nation Tournament in Bangladesh). In T20 they have played only a handful of matches without doing justice to their collective talent. So nearly ten years after getting the Test status, their statistics is not yet good enough and calls for their removal from Tests are gaining momentum with an increasing number of people wanting to keep them only for ODIs and T20s.

So they need to stage a recovery and stage it fast. Their present coach Jamie Siddons, who himself recovered successfully from skin cancer, thinks highly of the present lot of players. He is said to have taken up the assignments on the basis that he will have “a say” in the selection process. “Bangladesh is on the right track to become a competitive team in near future,” Siddons states. “We are still two years from reaching our potential…. but are capable of troubling most sides at the moment.” As far as ODIs are concerned we will agree with him, but in Tests and T20s we do not see that at all. The need to find the right combinations is urgent for him at least in these two forms of international cricket.

That the country is not at all short on talent is abundantly evident. Skipper Shakib Al Hasan is a very aggressive batsman who also bowls excellent spin. He can also hit the big sixes when needed. Imrul Kayes is a steady opener who looks quite fluent through the off-side and defends better than some international batsmen. Former captain Mashrafe Mortaza is a world class all-rounder who is a good pace bowler and also a hard hitting batsman lower in the order. If he can keep the injuries at bay, he would be a serious contender for the world’s best all-rounders. New comer Naeem Islam is a big hitter too. Rubel Hossain and Shahadat Hossain make a decent bowling combination that just needs to improve their variations to trouble top class batsmen regularly. One or two spinners are known to be coming up the ranks. Then there is that big enigma called Mohammed Ashraful, who is clearly far more talented than his statistics shows. He is a batsman in the mould of West Indian Ramnaresh Sarwan and needs to play the big innings that he is very well capable of.

We have also heard of a couple of pace bowlers who are being groomed in domestic cricket who are ready to be blooded into international cricket.

What Bangladesh needs right now is a lot more infrastructure at domestic level. They could also do with a few better coaches who could reach out to the school-level and teach the basics of the game at that age. Among the associate members of ICC they need to play a bit more to keep up the momentum. Someone also needs to work on their psychological make-up when they play against the likes of India and Australia. The negative mentality has to shift in Test cricket just the way they are now doing in ODIs. They need not come to the five-day-game with the sole aim of drawing the match. So perhaps setting higher goals by the coach would also be in order. All in all, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of conditioning, a lot more practice games and a bit more international exposure could make them what Siddons hopes to do.