Cricketer's Refuse to Learn
F Waliullah

No change whatsoever. Yes - that is what it was for Bangladesh in the 2nd world cup game against Sri Lanka. You could say after looking at the scorecard that Mohammad Ashraful has come in place of Habibul Bashar - so that's a change. But it didn't help as Ashraful scored a golden duck as well as the other two top order batsman, namely Hannan Sarkar and Ehsanul Haque.

Hannan Sarkar played a bad shot to a ball that was coming towards his off stumps from left arm pacer Chaminda Vaas bowling over the wicket, instead of trying to defend it, Sarkar went for playing a glorious shot only the ball was not there to play that shot. Mohammad Ashraful got a slower on the stumps and he just pushed it in the air towards the bowler. Ehsanul got a yorker ball that may have been going towards the stumps, but he got a thick outside edge and was out in the slips. Thus it was a hatrick for Chaminda Vaas in the first over and within the first 3 balls in a One Day International match. This is probably a world record and the 3rd hatrick in a world cup.

After the game against Canada, one would expect that the Bangladeshi batsman would bat and bat and bat for the two days that was between the Canada game and the Sri Lanka game. But the poor showing by the batsman only proved that they did not touch their bats at all. Instead of pushing the Bangladeshi batsman to be more determined on the field, the loss to Canada has made
the batsman even more hopeless.

After the initial hatrick, Sanwar Hossain started with a magnificient boundary, but he too perished trying to play across the line and was out leg before in the same over. At that stage, with 4 wickets down, that was the perfect scenario for the most senior specialist batsman in the side Al
Shahriar to try to play a good innings - but he blew it again by forcing a shot on the top. Alok Kapali played a nice little innings until he lost his concentration or was short of temperament or whatever - he was out trying to play in the air again.

By that stage, it was once again a survival game for Khaled Mashud and he performed just as well as he does - scored 20 runs playing 60 odd balls. It seems that Khaled Mashud is the best captain when we are underdogs and the worst captain when we are favorites to win a match. Mohammad Rafique went out the usual way trying to hit Muralitharan, Tapash Baisya was out trying to play yet another shot in the air. Only Mashrafee Murtoza showed some spirit with the bat and scored the second highest innings for Bangladesh with a quickfire 28. And then in the bowling Bangladesh captain and the bowlers showed little intent of taking at least one wicket. Hannan Sarkar, Al Shahriar, Alok Kapali - three of the top four batsman just threw their wickets away. Others were out as they showed little or no technique at all. It seems that only a miracle can change the mood of the players now.

I guess we all should be happy that we were not all out for less than 38 or 76 and beat either the lowest ever One Day total ever or our own lowest One Day total. But what kind of example are our batsman setting to the even more youngsters who are in Bangladesh and wants to play cricket? I know that those who are out there - 18 year old Ashraful, 19 year Kapali - they are all young, very young - but when they were young, they had the chance to follow the likes of Minhazul Abedin, Akram Khan and Aminul Islam. Will the youngsters who are now 12 or 14 years old - who will they follow? After today's 10 wicket loss to Sri Lanka - our second 10 wicket loss under
one year - that was against South Africa last year - my father had told me to pick up a new habit and give up on my habit of watching cricket.

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