This is the team we are: Mash

“They are India and we are Bangladesh and that is the difference between the two sides. In the field, who will play well [will win]. Since it is a big tournament, if you go by the names then you will be going on the backfoot.”

Soumya Sarkar, Bangladesh player

When in Dhaka, Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza is always casting his eyes towards Narail, his hometown. Having grown up in the village the right-arm pacer is more at home in quieter settings, away from the noise of city life and the singular focus placed on him as the face of the object of the country’s obsession.

While Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK, is nowhere near as frenzied and chaotic as Bangladesh’s one-stop metropolis, there was still much noise surrounding Bangladesh’s precarious position in the World Cup semifinal race. Perhaps that is why, with a gap of around five days between the team’s next practice session on June 30 ahead of their virtual knockout encounter against India in Edgbaston on July 2, Mashrafe and his family opted for a day and a half of quiet repose in the rural comforts of the Welsh region of Snowdonia.

Yesterday afternoon, Mashrafe reached the small town of Snowdon, a town in Gwynnedd county, built around Wales’s highest mountain bearing the same name. They had been fortunate with the weather as brilliant sunshine illuminated the road leading there, weaving through rock-capped green mountains and deep blue lakes. However, a bit of the good fortune ran out by the time they reached Snowdon. Mashrafe and his family -- as well as Mehedi Hasan Miraz and his newlywed -- were eager to take a quaint steam train ride up to the peak, but were disappointed when the ‘Mountain Railway’ staff informed him that they were booked solid for the day and that he would have to come back today.

However, such are the bounties of the region that another attraction was not too far away, and the families decided to go to the picturesque Swallow Waterfall around 15 miles back the way they came.

Ostensibly, Mashrafe may have been looking for some time away from cricket, but cricket never leaves his mind. As he was having some snacks at the Mountain

Railway station, he talked about the ongoing West Indies-India match, speculating on the kind of wicket they may get against India on July 2.

He may also have been seeking anonymity, but he soon enough a Bangladeshi sought him out for a selfie. There is no true getaway for a Bangladesh captain, it seems.

The long wait is over. Bangladesh won a multi-nation tournament after six abortive attempts when they beat West Indies by five wickets at The Village in Dublin in an extraordinary final where the pendulum swung from one end to the other after rain intervened.

The rasping drive for four through the covers that Mahmudullah hit for the winning runs was icing on a proverbial celebratory cake that the Tigers had been preparing over their six previous attempts since 2009, somehow spoiled each time by their opponents.

The bitter memories of those near misses, marked by famously hysterical sobs, collective brain-freeze moments and emotional breakdowns that led to national catastrophe, transformed into a rainbow after rain for the Tigers in Malahide on Friday.

The success in their seventh attempt across the short formats of the game was more of a statement than just winning a tri-series final. It was a statement of consistency over the course of four years, a statement of evolving as a team under a true leader, where X-factors are not a big issue and a growing statement of youthful exuberance under the tutelage of the Big Five.

The win also served as a perfect build-up going into the World Cup, which starts on May 30. Although the fans are dreaming big after the tri-series win, a reality check is the need of the hour and would auger well for the Tigers to freely play good, hard cricket.

The next objective for the Tigers will be to play well in their two warm-up games against Pakistan and India on May 26 and 28 respectively before their opening World Cup fixture against South Africa at The Oval on June 6.

The best-case scenario would be to take one game at a time in their nine league matches. The batting looks primed to take the challenge of consistently hitting the 300-plus run mark, which promises to be a par score, if not quite safe, this English summer.

Yet, the biggest concern for the Tigers is that their bowling unit still left a lot to be desired. The challenge for the bowlers will be to take wickets in the first ten overs of the Powerplay to stymie the run rate, and also bowl smartly in the last overs when runs are expected to surge.

Bangladesh do not have a leg-spinner in their kitty. The Tigers are also running the risk of carrying one qualified left-arm spinner in Shakib Al Hasan, who missed the tri-series final due to a muscle spasm in his back. This might be a wake-up call for the Tigers thinktank to opt for a back-up left-arm spinner in a long league format.

Bangladesh also do not possess an express quick. Most of them are containers rather than aggressors, save Rubel Hossain. But the biggest headache for Bangladesh in the pace department has so far been the indifferent performances from Mustafizur Rahman.

The left-arm pacer, already famous for his slow cutters, has been struggling to regain his pace since a shoulder operation. He has been designed to take crucial wickets in the middle as well as to stop the avalanche of runs in the death overs.

The Tigers will be desperately looking for Mustafizur to return to his usual self by the time they take on South Africa and ‘The Fizz’ in rhythm will certainly hold the key to the Tigers winning more games than they lose in the league phase.

If they can do that the fans can only dream big. But at the moment the Tigers need to firmly put their feet on the ground before heading off to England to renew their World Cup ambitions, which ended in a quarterfinal defeat four years ago in Australia.

Kane Williamson stood with hands outstretched as an accurate throw from Martin Guptill ricocheted off a diving Ben Stokes’s bat and went for four in the 100th over of a sublime World Cup final at Lord’s on Sunday. If the ball had just found the keeper’s glove, or even if it deflected at a less acute angle and went to the short third man fielder, England would have needed seven runs from the last two balls, but the overthrow made it three from two. A tie, then a tied Super Over later, England had won the World Cup through the quite irrelevant measure of having hit more boundaries over the course of the game.

After scoring 27 per cent of his team’s runs over 11 games and also embodying the very philosophy that brought his team to the final, no one had more right to be disappointed, angered, disillusioned and frustrated by that overthrow. But Williamson put his hands down and got back to the business of leading his team with a steady hand. He repeated that when marshalling his fielders in the Super Over and, even when all was lost and all of Lord’s was celebrating, Williamson’s composure held when he talked to the TV cameras minutes after Guptill was run out trying to complete the World Cup-winning run.

For those who followed Williamson through the World Cup, this acceptance of ‘uncontrollables’ -- a word he repeated on numerous occasions before and after the epic final --  should not be surprising. While for most captains talking about focusing on their own team’s strengths rather than the opposition’s is little more than a soundbyte, Williamson lived that mantra and his team followed that example. It is this acceptance of not being able to control everything in the wide scope provided by a 50-over match that brought New Zealand to within inches of winning their maiden World Cup.

On paper, their team was formidable, but Guptill’s indifferent form at the top of the order put pressure on the middle order. It was none other than Williamson who bore the brunt of that pressure and with the continuing frailty at the top of the order, reassessed conditions and realities expertly to give New Zealand a fighting chance time and again.

While a loss of form or injuries would have had most captains cursing their luck, Williamson just recognised the reality of the situation. Instead, he hit an unbeaten 106 to secure a four-wicket win against South Africa and in the very next match, scored 148 against West Indies to set up a five-run win.

Even so, by the time the semifinals rolled around, not many would have given New Zealand a chance of winning against India because the Black Caps had scraped through on net run rate after losing their last three league games. But there again, Williamson scored 67 in New Zealand’s 239 for eight -- a total that seemed sub-par but, in another example of Williamson’s pitch-perfect assessment, proved to be very competitive as New Zealand won by 18 runs.

As captain, he focused on his team’s strength -- their superb seam bowling attack that could take wickets in English conditions and cover up for the oft-misfiring batting lineup -- and reassessed accordingly. His team followed by example. Even as Williamson departed for 30 in the final, the rest of the batsmen did not panic and just focused on getting a total that they believed their bowlers could defend through age-old wicket-taking methods, regardless of how strong England’s batting was.

It was an uncontrollable.

Although heartbroken, Williamson graciously accepted the player-of-the-tournament trophy at the end of the match. It is not just Bangladeshis who have asked why Shakib Al Hasan -- with the greatest all-round performance in World Cup history -- did not win the prize.  But for fans of cricket, there is rich justice in recognising a player who tapped into the essence of the game, understood and accepted its cruelties, scored the runs he could and in the process, led his team to within inches of the World Cup. Williamson may not have the coveted trophy, but his example over the last month and a half has been a triumph for cricket.