Positive signs from defeat (25 March 1999)

25 March 1999

Positive signs from defeat

Dr Nizamuddin Ahmed

How much would it cost Bangladesh to opt out of the World Cup? Although barely fifty days away, this was perhaps the most likely wayout most Bangladeshis were considering after last night's defilement of the home team by visitors Kenya.

Playing on home ground, on wickets on which they have played two-day 80-over matches, playing to a cordial crowd that included their friends and relatives, with their own officials around, our own television crew, the journalists and cameramen are ever so friendly, even they know the ghugniwalla, playing in familiar weather conditions, if this was the best that our boys can deliver, should not some benevolent chaps warn them about the dreaded English weather, the hostile crowd in some Essex ground, unknown faces...?

My hope was definitely raised this morning on reading that Aminul Islam thought we were better than the Kenyans. I believed him because he is the expert.

Hopes were raised at half-time (we are already beginning to talk in non-cricketing lingo, and perhaps rightly so) when our bowlers did pretty well to restrict the Kenyans, okay the MIGHTY Kenyans, to under 250. Having been licked in the past and in consideration of my self-certified reputation of not being a fanatic fan, I edged myself unnoticed into the gallery to the resounding chants of 'Akram, Akram'. My heart missed a beat. Had he scored a century? The electronic scoreboard's 'chamatkar' reassured me that it was his well-deserved fifty. It then dawned on me that our cricketers had only to produce a molehill to earn mountains of love from the people.

The same people left the ground absolutely dejected after an hour or so. It's one thing losing a match and another being shown the candy and not getting your tongue to it. If we cannot score 232 runs against, pardon my expression, one of the weaker sides in the World Cup, how will we open the face of our bat against the might of Australia, Pakistan, West Indies and New Zealand? We have this far gained the expertise to even turn cats into tigers and, who knows? Scotland may also prove to be our burial ground.

Our repeated and consistent poor performance since the fluke win at ICC could not culminate at a worse hour. We have chosen to take our performance to the lowest possible ebb at a time when the Bangladesh Cricket Board is toiling ceaselessly to gain Test status. Many now believe there are other better ways of becoming a laughing stock.

A child asked me the other day, "Uncle, can the Test status be bought?" I told off the illiterate infant, saying that only big boys play cricket.

In the biting English weather, where fielders find their knuckles frozen, I dare not to think what our present lot of cricketers are capable of doing. Looking at 230-plus, we were short by plus-seventy on home ground.

Many 'experts' that I talked to last night said that this was our standard. Someday we might lose by 73 runs, on another day by eight wickets. We might score 150 or 175. We are just not good enough for the big league.

But there is hope. We might end up the most liked team in the World Cup, for helping all the others create record after record. Who said Bangladesh was useless? We shall continue to serve cricket. And serve only.

Another positive sign. Bangladeshis are gradually getting used to losing. In future the furore after a defeat will be even less.

Source :: The Bangladesh Daily Star (https://www.dailystarnews.com)