Moving on to right path finally?
From seeking Mashrafe Bin Mortaza as Bangladesh team mentor for World Cup 2023 to going overboard in protesting senior cricketers' retirements from some formats -- instead of relishing the achievements to commemorate their careers -- Bangladesh fans, media, and even the ones within the system have always been driven more by emotions than logic.
However, be it the latest World Cup debacle, or the lengthy toxic period that the country's cricket had to endure due to a fallout between two of its stalwarts -- Tamim Iqbal and Shakib Al Hasan -- the Bangladesh team finally seems to have learned the lesson and is willing to move forward.
"If this team gets left alone, and these young guys get left alone for a period of time, two to three years, to just play… and you have faith in them. They have shown you already what they can do," Bangladesh assistant coach Nic Pothas said yesterday ahead of the Tigers' second T20I against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui today.
If anything that could be ascertained from Pothas' remarks is that it was an attempt from the South African to not let anything hamper the team's harmony developed of late.
The assistant coach's desire is only justified as the Najmul Hossain Shanto-led Bangladesh now stand on the verge of a momentous occasion -- they are eyeing their maiden T20I series triumph over the Black Caps on New Zealand soil.
In fact, the sporadic successes that Bangladesh have had in recent years had one thing in common. Before Shanto took charge as an interim skipper and guided the Tigers to a Test win over New Zealand at home in November this year and went on to record Bangladesh's maiden ODI and T20I wins over the same opponent at their den in the ongoing series, Mominul Haque's Test side had provided the Tigers their most prestigious accolade till date -- a historic win away to a full-strength New Zealand in the Mount Maunganui Test in 2022.
All these were achieved without Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal, and Mahmudullah Riyad in the picture -- either unavailable due to injuries or due to quitting the format.
The fact that none of Shakib, Tamim, or Riyad were available in these aforementioned triumphs, or that Mushfiqur Rahim did not pull off any heroics, does not diminish or wash away what each of these big names had done for the country's cricket.
Without taking anything away from any of these stalwarts, what all these triumphs meant is that Bangladesh do have in store what it takes to move on instead of wallowing in nostalgia every time the team takes a stumble in any series or tour.
Unprompted, Pothas still chose to fend off questions regarding experience and balance that usually arise after one failure sans the big names.
"When you talk of any team, if it's not a matured batting line-up then you are always going to have questions. Remember, we won by five wickets [in the first T20I against New Zealand]. A five-wicket win in a T20 game is a pretty conclusive win," Pothas added.
Nonsensical over-the-top experimentations -- take the case of trying to have Soumya Sarkar established at number six or seven for many years -- are something that often come very casually to the Bangladesh team management.
It is also true that repeated failures from players at one position had sometimes left the management with no options so it had to attempt something out of the box to create a stop-gap fix. But Pothas reminded the repercussions in case of failure in being judicious in this case.
"The biggest danger is chopping and changing the team [so much] that when every time a batter walks in to bat, he feels it is his last innings," he explained.
Shrugging off the latest World Cup fiasco, Bangladesh finally seem to be getting into shape ahead of the next big event -- the T20 World Cup next year. It is nothing new for Bangladesh to lose momentum just at the most crucial juncture and be thwarted back to square one.
For now, all is happy and merry in the Tigers' camp as they look to seal a historic series. But what happens six months from now at the 2024 T20 World Cup? Or, what the scenario would be a year or five years from now?
If Bangladesh are not to not find sombre answers to this then they might need to act on what Pothas said, especially on the part where he mentioned "leaving the team alone" in order to let the players keep on "just playing".