Image Credit- AFP
The collective World Cup woes of England, Pakistan,
and Sri Lanka are helping to ease the impact for the visiting Bangladeshi fans
as they congregate for tea in central Kolkata on Monday evening. While there
isn’t nearly the same sense of satisfaction as when the Netherlands defeats
Bangladesh, it’s still worthwhile to have some schadenfreude when India defeats
England by 100 runs.
When Bangladesh qualified for this World Cup
automatically the previous year, there were great expectations. Before the
cycle started in 2021, former captain Tamim Iqbal had set his sights on
finishing third in the ICC ODI Super League.
“We took up the qualification process very
seriously,” he said in November. “We knew we had some away series
too. We didn’t want to wait till the very end to qualify. Going into the 2023
World Cup, we definitely want to do really well. If we qualify as one of the
top three or four teams, it makes sense talking about wanting to play in the
semi-finals or finals. If you go in as say the No. 4 team, it means you have
done well over 20-23 games. For a team like us, it would give us some confidence.”
However, after six matches of the real World Cup, that
claim seems absurd. The fact that Bangladesh was performing well until 2022
seems like a long time ago. Even the performers who did well seem like shadows
of their former selves.
Their defeat in the ODI series against England earlier
this year marked the beginning of it all. Though it wasn’t highlighted at the
time, their modest strategy against the defending world champions appears to
have followed them to India.
Bangladesh defeated England in the Twenty20
Internationals and then easily defeated Ireland in the home and away series,
however there was a noticeable decline in form. A recently implemented rotation
strategy also prevented captain Tamim from knowing what lineup will suit him
best for the upcoming World Cup. When they lost a series against Afghanistan in
July, the fissures started to surface again; nonetheless, everyone agrees that
Tamim’s turbulent retirement had a significant impact on that outcome.
There was some wiggle room in the Asia Cup campaign,
which was unconvincing and which worsened against New Zealand last month. It
was more significant that Bangladesh was utilising the games as a World Cup
warm-up than the outcome.
Litton Das, who was the face of the new Bangladesh
just a year ago, is now a symbol of their contradictions. Najmul Hossain Shanto
has completely betrayed his excellent form from the previous 12 months. Tanzid
Hasan is being allowed time to develop, yet some of the methods used to
disregard him aren’t beneficial to him.
This problem has also been exacerbated by the BCB.
Tamim could have provided steadiness at the top of the order at this World Cup
if the board had handled him with a bit more care. Furthermore, the two players
who have showed the path forward are the ones the board believed were past
their prime.
Many people believe that Bangladesh’s batting team is
solely to blame for their dismal World Cup showing. With the exception of the
opening game against Afghanistan and the first ninety minutes or so against
India, they haven’t appeared to be a team capable of successfully chasing down
targets or building a large lead.
Hathurusinghe and Shakib, the two primary characters,
are not brand-new to the story. The former, who is well-liked by BCB, was
repeatedly asked to return to the position he vacated in 2017. He did so in
February.
Although Shakib is the best athlete in the nation, it
was ill-timed for him to criticise Tamim in an interview prior to the World
Cup. It could have diverted the team’s attention from their on-field work, and
Shakib eventually acknowledged as much following Saturday’s defeat to the
Netherlands.
A topic for another day is how the administration of
the Bangladeshi squad and the BCB failed to stop one senior player from making
fun of another senior player in the media. However, it is still a perplexing
enigma how the batting issue could never be resolved until their seventh World
Cup encounter. The club management’s missteps and experiments will come under
scrutiny in addition to the batters’ inconsistent play and bad form.