Endangered “Tigers”
Both the Team Bangladesh and the Royal Bengal Tigers are endangered.
Team Bangladesh is leaving Dhaka on 10 of August for Canada where they will be playing a T20 series against Canada, Pakistan & the West Indies and from Canada they will be going to Australia for a 03 ODI series starting from August 31. The 1st task of the cricketers will be to play as a team, perform and win a T20 match against Pakistan or the West Indies.
What we have seen in the recent past is that the Pakistan cricket team is too strong for Bangladesh in any competition. But again I will not be surprised to see Bangladesh pull an upset in the triangular tournament as the game is a 20 over match and it could swing either way as none of the cricketing nation is yet to master this format . This is a brand new concept and no team has yet shown consistency in the micro version.
Whenever the team is out of the country for more than 03 weeks, they fail to focus on the game. I feel that after the team's participation in the T20 event, they should come back home, take rest for a few days and go for the tough series against Australia.
The big question will be how the team plays on the bouncy tracks against the mighty Aussies? If they can play the full quota of 50 overs one will have to admit Bangladesh cricket is heading in the right direction. But looking at the records it is unlikely that they will be able to do so. Then where do we stand? Our cricketers are not capable of playing 300 balls on a regular basis at home or in the batting friendly subcontinent pitches. Sending them to Australia is like sending a battalion of soldiers with sticks to a war zone to fight against an army equipped with guns & cannons.
The results of the T20 and the Aussie series are already known to us and like the other tournaments these two series will again be another one sided affair. So the pundits need to answer, is there any reason that we should send the senior team to Australia, England or South Africa at all? Since the Australian schedule has been fixed by ICC as part of the F.T.P., I guess there is nothing much the BCB can do at this moment but what they can do for the future is request ICC to reschedule the future tour programme (FTP) for Bangladesh seniors in all formats of the game and replace it with the A teams' itinerary instead.
For the improvement of cricket we should concentrate more and more on the school & junior levels and make sure that the playing conditions, especially the pitch is even. For the evenness of the pitch we can make our young cricketers play on the artificial turf where the bounce, pace, cuts and turns are even and the young players can play the ball according to its merit. The artificial turf is in use in countries like Australia, South Africa, New Zealand & England where the juniors play regularly on these turfs, instead of the traditional clay pitch which are difficult to maintain, especially in a country like ours where the playing conditions are tough and the playgrounds are limited. The number of four and five day matches need to be reintroduced at all levels so that the batsman gets enough time and develops the habit of occupying the crease.
Once this habit develops, it will be much easier for our players to play international matches as they will know at the back of their minds which ball to play and which one to leave. The longer version is the ultimate solution for developing techniques. It is simply like the classical music, if one knows the sargam of the music one can sing any song at any place irrespective of the instrument. So getting the basics right is the first priority for saving the tigers of the future. If this can be done, the future will be brighter for both the players and the millions of fans of Bangladesh cricket.
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