Tigers deserve their stripes
If you thought the Ashes was the biggest Test series this summer, then you'd be wrong. Andrew Miller explains the importance of Bangladesh
 |
|
At Lord's on July 21, a nation of 20 million of the most geographically blessed people in the world takes on its oldest, most privileged rivals - when Australia and England (UK population: 59 million) launch the 2005 Ashes. It could be a humdinger of a series, in which case a sizeable proportion of the cricket-watching world will also sit up and take note. But it is equally likely to be another damp squib to add to the eight that have gone before it, in which case 59 million Brits will give up their pretence for another four years and go back to watching football. Unless England can produce a miracle, this year's Ashes will become just another sub-plot in sport's oldest soap opera.
Now consider this. On May 26, Lord's opens its pavilion to 11 representatives of a nation of 150 million of the most wretched underachievers on the planet - a country with a tragic history, a desperate present and a far-from-certain future. In the 34 years since the country was born, numb with shock at the end of a bloody war of liberation, Bangladesh has been globally renowned for all the wrong reasons. Floods and cyclones frequently devastate the rural population; collapsing buildings and violent protest demonstrations stain the urban image, while the political scene is so implacably divided that the Berlin-based NGO, Transparency International, has ranked Bangladesh as the world's most corrupt country for four years running.
Some might argue that the country has got the cricket team it deserves. The circumstances of Bangladesh's acceptance into the Test family are dubious to say the least, while their first five years as a Test nation have served up a tale of barely relenting failure. Allegations of match fixing riddle the most famous moment of their sporting history - the 1999 World Cup victory over Pakistan that effectively secured their Test status - and it wasn't until they edged out their fellow stragglers, Zimbabwe - at the 35th attempt - that they finally broke their Test match duck. But six years down the line, the question of Bangladesh's illegitimacy is no longer relevant. So long as Asia remains the economic hub of the game, they are here and they are here to stay.
Nobody enjoys the stigma of being the worst nation in the world. Remember the summer of 1999, when England crashed to the bottom of the unofficial World Championship table and Nasser Hussain was booed off the balcony at The Oval? The ignominy was hard to stomach. The front page of the Sun declared the death of the national summer game, England's opponents all around the world doubled up in mocking laughter and the rest of us just shook our heads in bewilderment.
And yet, it was only a game. What does England, a nation that once ruled a third of the globe and has left as a legacy a single common language, really know about failure? Their crime in 1999 was to lose to New Zealand over a four-Test series, a result which left them ranked, albeit briefly, as the ninth Test team out of nine. The following year, Bangladesh rolled into town to take the Test membership into double figures, and since then, no one but Zimbabwe has come close to challenging for bottom spot.
But how shameful, really, is it to be classed as the 10th-best team in the world? Until cricket burst into the national consciousness, Bangladesh had never come so close to such elite status in any walk of life. After independence, football was the nation's first sporting love - the national side had played an important role in raising awareness during their independence struggle - but a nation's football ability tends to reflect its economic strength and Bangladesh remained firmly rooted towards the bottom of both tables.
Cricket with its narrower appeal and Asian-centric focus, offers something more tangible to a nation desperate for success. Suddenly, rank mediocrity is not the best that Bangladesh can aspire to. The country has found an outlet for its energies, and given time and talent to nurture, it is certain one day to stand proud among the established nations.
This summer provides a glimpse of what lies in store, for Bangladesh have wangled an invitation to the most exclusive private party of them all. They have been asked to raise the curtain to an Ashes series, of all contests, and will do so by playing a maiden Test at Lord's, of all venues. And then, as if that wasn't daunting enough, they are to be treated as equal partners in a triangular series involving both heavyweights. In all probability they will be hopelessly out of their depth, and in the case of the one-dayers, horribly so. But don't be fooled into thinking that this little stopover doesn't matter: for 150 million Bengalis, that old adage: "It's not the winning that counts but the taking part", will never have rung so true.
The critics justifiably argue that there is little room for sentiment in top-level sport, so sympathy will be in short supply this summer when Bangladesh's defeats start rolling in. But Bengalis are resilient. In 1998, the London School of Economics led a study into the link between personal spending power and one's perceived quality of life. It concluded that Bangladeshis are in fact the happiest people on earth, for they are able to derive more pleasure from their modest incomes and unassuming way of life than many other richer nations - the UK was ranked a lowly 32nd.
This is a people who have clung to their identity with unrelenting tenacity - from the days when, as part of East Pakistan, they were forced to fight against the imposition of Urdu as the nation's sole unifying language, to that bloody independence struggle in 1971 when over a million people were slaughtered in nine months of the most bitter hostilities. It speaks volumes for the importance of cricket in the development of a Bangladeshi identity that, in November 2000, the then president of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, Saber Chowdhury, described the country's elevation to Test status as the third most historic event in their national life. In the circumstances, it is only right that living up to that status should also be a struggle.
Chowdhury's endorsement did not change Bangladesh's shameful lack of preparation for international cricket. For 20 years after independence, cricket was seen largely as an irrelevance - time-consuming and expensive, symbolic of a bygone era - and so the country had no first-class structure, just a Dhaka-based one-day league of middling quality. By England's inaugural Test series in October 2003, the sum total of the nation's indoor practice facilities was a four-lane concrete hut 75 minutes north of Dhaka and this in a country where monsoon downpours are the rule, not the exception.
And yet, while the infrastructure has been lacking, the spirit remains indefatigable. Wild celebrations greet Bangladesh's every success, making a mockery of the blasé, uninterested, attitudes more successful nations adopt. When Bangladesh beat Kenya in the final of the 1997 ICC Trophy, it was the delirium that greeted the result, more than the quality of the victory itself, that forced the ICC to sit up and take note. This surging groundswell of support was the decisive factor that enabled Bangladesh to leapfrog the old front runners, Kenya, in the race for the next Test berth.
It has not been an unconditional love affair. By the time of the 2003 World Cup, Bangladesh's supporters were becoming grossly disillusioned by a cycle of humiliating defeats. This reached its nadir at Durban on February 11, when a dreadlocked plumber, Austin Codrington, bowled the no-hopers, Canada, to a 60-run victory in their first senior appearance for 24 years. Far from being the nation's saving grace, cricket was now dragging Bangladesh's inadequacies ever further into the glare of public scrutiny. The BCB wisely recognised the urgent need for action, and following a public enquiry, sacked the coaches Mohsin Kamal and Ali Zia along with the entire selection panel and captain Khaled Mashud. Mashud took the indignity on the chin, and has remained an indispensable part of the team ever since.
Into the fray strode the imposing, hugely respected figure of Dav Whatmore, a World-Cup winner as coach of Sri Lanka seven years earlier and a man who understood the need to nurture the team on a match-to-match basis, and protect them from the backlash that would accompany their inevitable failures. His first series in charge was a daunting two-Test series Down Under, in which the late David Hookes urged Australia to go for a victory inside one day and nobody bothered to deny that this was a possibility. And yet, by posting 295 on a greentop in the first innings of the second Test, Bangladesh avoided that ignominy hands-down and left the country in higher spirits than at any other point in their Test history. Two months later, they came within one wicket of a maiden Test victory in Pakistan, and even in defeat, they were garlanded by an ecstatic crowd on their return to Dhaka Airport.
Bangladesh will remain the whipping boys of Test cricket for several years to come and in all probability the forthcoming tour of England will mark another significant dip in their fortunes, after the heady success they enjoyed in their maiden series win over Zimbabwe back in January. But the breadth and depth of their support proves that this is a nation worth investing in, and undoubtedly, the most significant step in their development was taken back home in Dhaka in February 2004.
The ICC has done Bangladesh few favours in their short time at the top but the decision to award them the Under-19 World Cup was an unequivocal masterstroke. Where else in the world could such a lowly tournament be embraced as the greatest show on earth? For the opening ceremony alone, 40,000 tickets were snapped up on the black market and matches involving even the makeweights of Uganda and Papua New Guinea were sold out a week in advance. For the first time, international cricket in Bangladesh carried beyond the narrow confines of Dhaka and Chittagong as five new stadia were inaugurated across the country. A heady fortnight came to the most jubilant of conclusions when Bangladesh trumped the mighty Australians to win the final of the plate competition.
The man of the match on that day was a young left-arm spinner, Enamul Haque jr, who is fast becoming the standard-bearer for the new generation. His figures of 5 for 31 earned him a recall to the Test side that he had already represented, as a 16-year-old, on England's maiden visit in 2003-04. He became a superhero earlier this year, with three consecutive five-wicket hauls in the series victory over Zimbabwe.
Another of Enamul's Under-19 colleagues, the fast bowler Shahadat Hossain, will also be making the trip to England, as well as the precocious opener, Nafis Iqbal, who charmed a century in a warm-up match against England in October 2003 and then had the temerity to dismiss England's spinners as "ordinary". Factor in Mohammad Ashraful, the youngest centurion in Test history, and Mashrafe bin Mortaza, the most natural seam bowler in the country, and it appears Bangladesh has identified a core of talent that will reach maturity sometime over the next five years.
It could even be that some of them will reach maturity on this most exacting of tours, in front of a sea of their ex-pat supporters from England and the USA, who are expected to descend on Lord's and Chester-le-Street for the latest biggest step in Bangladesh's Test baptism. The main event of this English summer may not get underway until late July, but don't be fooled - what comes before has a significance all of its own.
Andrew Miller is assistant editor of Cricinfo