Bangladesh shows there's more to cricket than results

Michael Atherton says a couple of lifeless pitches robbed the series of excellence and intensity, but writes in the Times that despite the disappointing results for Bangladesh and the questions raised over their Test status, it is a country where the game inspires and is central to a notion of national identity.

It is a country with little other than enormous manpower. The only positive stories to emerge recently out of Bangladesh are the Nobel prize given to Muhammad Yunus for his revolution in microcredit, and the Bangladesh cricket team. People recall the celebrations after the unexpected World Cup victories over Pakistan in 1999 and India in 2007, and the outpouring of national pride that followed. Suddenly, people were seen wearing Bangladesh cricket shirts and Bangladesh flags were paraded proudly in the street.

Now Shakib Al Hasan, the captain, is one of the world’s leading all-rounders — a great source of shared pride — and his contract with Worcestershire is seen as evidence of Bangladesh’s growing influence on the cricket world. Each landmark — Siddique’s maiden hundred and Bangladesh’s highest Test score against England, for example — is cherished as a step in the right direction. Cricket provides rich nourishment in a diet that is low on self-esteem.

Simon Hughes writes in the Daily Telegraph that Bangladesh needs more exposure to the top teams, and lauds the vibrancy and enthusiasm they bring to world cricket.

In the Guardian, Mike Selvey works in a reference to Orson Welles' classic 1949 film while calling for a more regular deployment of a fielder at third man.

Perhaps, for true evocation, this should be read while sitting in the Café Mozart in Vienna, eating strudel while listening to Anton Karas and his zither, for it concerns the third man and his virtual disappearance, a species threatened with extinction.