Shaping up to be the worst since '08
It happened to Test skipper Mushfiqur Rahim as early as the first day of the second Test and although ODI captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza is not prey to his emotions to the same extent, he reached that stage too after the loss in the second ODI was lost at Paarl on Wednesday. It was the stage where there are no answers. Bangladesh had come to South Africa bearing the reputation of a team on the up, with a World Cup quarterfinal, a Champions Trophy semifinal and a series win over the hosts in their last meeting behind them.
With just the dead rubber third ODI and the two T20Is to follow, what has happened here is Bangladesh's worst away tour since the last time they toured South Africa in 2008, when the closest result was a loss by 12 runs in the T20I. But that was the Bangladesh of old, when the aim was not to lose badly. Since whitewashing New Zealand at home in the 2010 ODI series, Bangladesh had gone to another level in international cricket. In that time there have been two all-loss away tours – in West Indies in 2014 and the New Zealand tour in 2016-17 – and although it has not gotten to that stage yet on this tour, it seems only a matter of time.
The 104-run defeat in Paarl was Bangladesh's best result on the tour, a match where they were not in the game at any stage. The margins of defeat before Paarl were 333 runs in the first Test with Bangladesh being bundled out for 90 in the last innings, an innings and 254 runs in the second Test with innings of 147 and 143 and by10 wickets in the first ODI after scoring 278.
That tells the story of a team that has not once played competent all-round cricket for three weeks now. Since that 2010 series against New Zealand, 2014 was their worst year in terms of results, but they still got close to winning in the first ODI there.
Even going back before 2010, the all-loss tour of New Zealand in 2009 was better than this tour is shaping up to be, as Bangladesh lost the third ODI by just three wickets after scoring 244. And while the excuses are locked and loaded --South Africa are a difficult country for the subcontinent teams (all the pitches they played on were uncharacteristically flat), Bangladesh were missing important players (South Africa were missing four frontline bowlers by the second Test) – Bangladesh have, or it was thought, come a long way to be making such excuses.
Meanwhile, the team seems to be suffering off the field too, with the rift that showed up during the second Test between captain and coach probably still lingering. Coach Chandika Hathurusingha remains elusive, having said before the first Test that this was the best time to be playing South Africa, because of the injuries. That has now proven to be the biggest misread of a tour where Mushfiqur won the toss and chose to field twice.
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