The rise and rise of Bangladesh cricket

EVERY FRIDAY, from 11 pm to 2 am, Radio Shadhin fills the moonlit Dhaka nights with cricket talk. The telephone lines are jammed with listeners calling in droves. Some tune in their cars, many at their homes, and quite a few turn outside the radio station. Mounted on a wall, a big speaker blares out the show and people laugh and curse along. Often, emotions run high in this cricket-crazy country. Of late, the discussions have been around Mushfiqur Rahim’s captaincy and should he be relieved of his wicketkeeping, or whether Shakib Al Hasan is being irresponsible in the way he throws his wicket away.

The format is simple: the anchor is with a cricket journalist who answers queries from people in a lively chat show. Not everyone can take the emotional heat from the fans. The show producer had to once yank a journalist off air as the situation was threatening to get out of control.

“I was getting angry with the callers,” laughs the journalist now.

“Cricket is the No. 1 sport in the country,” says another cricket writer who is a regular in the show. It’s a line that we have heard often in India in the last few decades, but the way he stresses the ranking is something different. Cricket has exploded in Bangladesh at the right time to whip up this kind of frenzy. In India, by the time satellite television came in, cricket was already the No.1 sport. In Bangladesh, cricket has grown with the rise of television. The game itself at a different stage of evolution there as compared to India, and the (emotional) responses have been markedly different in some ways.

The radio station should be tuned in this Friday to hear the post-mortem of the India series. By then, who knows whether the BCB president Nazmul Hasan would have already called the journalists to his pharmaceutical office to share Rahim’s fate. Hasan comes from an important political family, is an industrialist, and has been associated with Abahani Cricket Club for many years before he came into the board. He comes across as a man extremely pleased with what he has done with cricket. Especially with reining in the indiscipline and blooding in new players.

However, the real power seems to lie in the hands of the coach Chandika Hathurusingha. A quiet bespectacled man with a subtle humour is the one in charge. Nearly all the journalists tell the story of how a famous cricketer was tamed by the coach. “Just as you have come to here to coach and earn money, I have to right to go and play where I want,” the player allegedly told Hathurusingha about his desire to play in cricket leagues. “But not by missing national camps for the team, come or be dropped” was the tough love shown by the coach. And with little bit of help from the board president, the player fell in line. He has another Sri Lankan, Thilan Samaraweera, to help him with batting. Samaraweera is perhaps a good choice for who better than him to teach patience to the impatient batsmen in the team. Though even he can’t do much about Shakib

Shakib is a wonderful prism through which you can look at the Bangladesh team. Talented all-rounder, all right, but as a batsman he has made it clear that he isn’t going to change his approach. There are two kinds of fans in Bangladesh — those who think Shakib should continue hitting, and an (apparently) an increasing majority who feel he should curb his urges a little bit.

Al Hasan’s intrepid approach, as evidenced by a lovely little helpless chuckle the other day when asked about Shakib.

Shakib is a wonderful prism through which you can look at the Bangladesh team. Talented all-rounder, all right, but as a batsman he has made it clear that he isn’t going to change his approach. But there are two kinds of cricket fans in Bangladesh — those who think Shakib should continue hitting, and an (apparently) increasing majority who feel he should curb his urges a little bit. They might cuss him for his ways — a leading Bangla daily Prothom Alo even used poetry to slam him after first innings when he holed out to mid-on. “I wish to die” ran the poet’s lyrics as headline, hitting out at his ‘self-destructive’ ways. The earlier evening, the journalist whose report was titled in that provocative way, had asked Shakib whether he would learn from Virat Kohli. ‘Kohli just has one six in his four double tons, would you change your approach?’ or words to that effect, and Shakib, who had already answered a few questions about his batting, looked up, stared at the journalist, and slowly shook his head in disagreement. Next day, the newspaper found a poetic way to respond of course.

Despite all the brouhaha over his batting, it was Shakib who came up with arguably the best batting from both teams. Especially when Umesh Yadav was unfurling a dreamy reverse-swing spell where he showed exceptional control over lines and lengths, and admirable ability to make the ball move both ways. Shakib played out of his skin to survive that spell before he fell, trying to hit R Ashwin over mid-on.

It’s clear that this Test team missed the calming presence of Mashrafe Mortaza. All the talk about the first ever Test in India and such seemed to have affected them a touch. If anyone could have helped the team forget the hype and its inherent pressure, it would have been Mortaza. On the eve of the Test, he had talked about how the teams in the past used to enter the cricket field with hope, but these days the team has great self-belief. Akram Khan, former captain and current head of cricket operations, put it even better. Talking about his days – the pre-mortaza days- he said, “We were just happy to turn out and move along with the Pakistani and Indian cricketers”. From feeling privileged and overawed, to feeling hopeful, and now towards self-belief — Bangladesh cricket has indeed come a long way.