Cricket in ruins

Photo: AFP

This is a reply to a letter published in The Daily Star entitled "Cricket over-publicised" which appeared on 23 June. I cannot acquiesce in the opinion of Mr. Sohel because I feel he has just made his statements rather sententiously. Immature players overburdened with expectations from the media and fans are according to him the main reasons for the poor performance of the Tigers. But he has overlooked that young Tigers have taken Bangladesh in the Super Eight stage of last year's 50-over World Cup where Bangladesh defeated India and South Africa while one of the most senior members of the side Habibul Bashar failed to deliver. Not giving debut to young cricketers would be like giving indemnity to senior cricketers despite their poor performance. The selectors are given the responsibility to choose the best team and not the "oldest team" for the country.
And without constructive criticism of the media and from fans the Tigers will not be even inspired to do well. We have seen recently how criticism has often been the impetus to do well for teams like India and Pakistan in cricket and for Germany and Italy in football. The idea that people should wait ten years to see their team perform well is simply ludicrous because Bangladesh frequently play international cricket against tough opponents these days, whereas India and Pakistan in the past decades had very limited opportunities of playing international cricket.
It is really difficult to say why almost all members of the national team are playing so poorly nowadays. But it is not difficult to see that our industrious cricketers under Jamie Siddons are now only playing to lose against higher ranked opponents. Such attitude is going to lead to more ignominious defeats for the Tigers!