Bangladesh aiming high

Cricket is famously fixated with highests, mosts, longests, quickests. The next eight days are all about firsts. First Test match ever played in Darwin. First game between Australia and Bangladesh. First time in living memory an Australian Test has started before 10am. And today was the first time Mohammad Latif, Bangladesh's team manager, had ever heard of Wisden.

"Wisden? What is this Wisden?" He inches forward in his chair, his smiling face wrinkling in confusion. "Well," I explain, "it's a ... it's a ..."

Can it really be that he's not familiar with Wisden? "It's a website and a magazine. And a really thick yellow book."

The average Bangladeshi household might know little of Wisden, but Wisden knows all about Bangladesh. In its latest edition the really thick yellow book documents no fewer than 30 Tests and one-day internationals involving the game's most bankable whipping-boys. Twenty-nine ended in defeat, all of them comprehensive. "Nowhere near good enough," scoffed one Wisden reporter. "Rootless domestic structure," observed another. Bangladesh's batsmen, it was noted, "lacked the technique and patience to counter quality bowling". Their medium-pacers were "innocuous".

"It is very sad, you know," says Latif. "We have won Test status by our strength, by playing good cricket. Our infrastructure is very good. We have under-13s, under-16s, under-19s. We have a development squad, a sports institute. Cricket is in our school curriculum. All over the country cricket is very, very popular. In every nook and corner Bangladeshis play cricket ... All right, at the World Cup we did not do well - it doesn't mean we should be criticised. I think they should encourage us."

Latif draws the same comparison everyone makes: New Zealand. It took the Kiwis 26 years before they finally won a Test. The difference, less frequently pointed out, is that New Zealand took two decades to play 20 Tests. Bangladesh will play their 20th next week, after a little over two years. Those easybeat New Zealand sides had time to regroup, rethink and remove the dead wood. For Bangladesh it's another day, another match, another slaughter.

"The more you play, the more experienced you are," is the way Latif sees it. But isn't all this too much too soon? "If you ask me, yes. Some more planning should have been done. We shouldn't have jumped up so suddenly." Better, he says, to have built up the domestic structure and started softly against Kenya, Zimbabwe and the like. "That way you can measure your strength. Then you go for South Africa or Australia, India or Pakistan. Slowly, gradually, you step forward."

The anti-Bangladesh carping has reached a crescendo since the team's arrival. Dennis Lillee, in his consistently cantankerous newspaper column, said that for Australia this series equals easy runs, easy wickets, easy money. Other commentators have pleaded for the hosts, in a show of mercy, to field their B team (which would be, in fact, what cricket confusingly calls it's A team). David Hookes believes the opposite, urging the Australians to clean up the Test in one day. Another first.

"The players have taken the criticisms very boldly," says Latif. "They have said: 'That's OK, we are going to show what we can achieve.' In one or two years we will definitely come up. Definitely. Soon after this Australian tour you will see the positives. In fact we are already seeing it."

Today they fielded sharply and bowled tidily enough, as a Northern Territory Chief Minister's XI sputtered along at around 1.5 runs an over. Last week they successfully hauled in 230 to beat an Australian academy side. And their net workouts have been "excellent sessions, excellent". A sports psychologist addressed team practice on Wednesday. Dav Whatmore, their coach, slogged outfield catches and the team's bus driver tossed forward some rudimentary throwdowns. Intensity was low, enthusiasm high. They have the strut of schoolboys - seven of the 15 players are 21 or under - but the smiles of winners.

Besides, what do they have to frown about? Those snide putdowns are just so much newspaper talk from smarmy southerners. Up here, in Australia's tropical north, the local folk offer nothing but praise. They buttonhole the players in the street, grasp their hands, wish them well. And the weather is as warm as the people. It might be the cool season but the mid-afternoon breeze still slaps you hard in the face. Just like back home, which is - reassuringly - only a six-and-a-half hour flight away.

"You cannot expect Bangladesh to win or anything like that," Latif admits. "But we are going to play very positive. In the one-day matches we must bat for 50 overs. In the Tests we must remain at the crease for five days. That will be a big thing for us." It would also, appropriately, be something of a first.

Speaking of firsts, Michael Clarke - who is leading the Chief Minister's XI - endured his first ever press conference as a captain on Wednesday. This was a moment of seismic historical significance, for Clarke is the odds-on favourite to be Australia's skipper a decade from now. It was a promising beginning. He grinned obligingly. He spouted the usual guff about the ground being in fantastic shape and the pitch looking good. He also, in keeping with the local dress code, wore white rubber flip-flops on his feet.

That was another first - and almost certainly a last.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.