betaar
May 21, 2007, 02:14 PM
I am sure all of you BC fans are following the ongoing saga that our beloved captain Habibul Bashar is playing with the mind of BD cricket fans, cricket management, the rest of the players and sadly his own on deciding his oneday cricket retirement. It is obvious that Bashar is not a man of strong will or mental strength, which always showed up in his captaincy. I know he brought the most number of wins for <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comhttp://www.banglacricket.com/alochona/ /><st1:country-region w:st=<st1:place w:st=" /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bangladesh</st1:place></st1:country-region> but then again in the land of blind one eyed man is the king. So comparing him with the ex-captains is unfair the least and asking him to continue, in spite of his personal failures, banking on his success as captain defies logic. But what makes Bashar even more dismal lately is the way he’s handling his oneday retirement situation and making any future plan impossible for the management or the future captain.
Bashar’s lack of decisiveness on the retirement issue is as apparent as his batting lately and needless to say his captaincy. Since there have been millions of threads on his poor batting and captaincy on this board, I will save you from the boredom by not talking about it rather what I really want to focus on why Bashar is unsure of his own fate though it is in his own hand. Bashar can take a simple decision and put an end to all the bashing (that he’s got within the last few months) and possibly save his reputation for the future. But what’s making it harder for him to escape all these abuse is the attraction of being in the limelight even if for all the wrong reasons. But the question is, can we really blame him? Let’s find out.
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<FONT face=Verdana>I think the way Bashar is acting is indicative of our national attitude to life and thus a problem for our country. We as a nation, whether in sports or economic development or anything else, is very much success starved and so are the individuals that belong within. Once one of us manages to succeed in life and comes under limelight, it’s very hard to give that up and our cricketers are no different of who most are from families that are either economically and/ or professionally success deprived. When these players gain success by virtue of their hard work and talent and get used to being the focus of the nation, it is virtually impossible for them to give up that lifestyle even when they reach their shelf lives.
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<FONT face=Verdana>Now to justify my point, let’s look at the cricket players of the successful (I mean not just cricket, but other sports, economy, education, etc.) nations who actually know when to quit. If we just look at the recent retirements of all the great players we will see that they all retired at the peak of their career, especially the Australian players. We all know how well Warne and McGrath (I am not going to even bring up Steve Waugh) were playing when they decided to put away their boots. Surely they were top of their games, surely they could’ve carried on at least couple of more years, but they wanted to retire with their heads held high. Not that all the players from the rich nations come from rich families, but they got the right molding when growing up. On the contrary, look at Tendulkar still trying to break records after records and on the process getting criticized by so many ex-great players and the fans of his country that used to worship him as a GOD. The fact that he belongs to the subcontinent (which we are a bi-product of) makes him the victim of the same mentality which tells him to carry on till he is taken out of the shelf. I wouldn’t bring Lara’s retirement in this argument because his retirement has to do more with the abysmal state of WI cricket then his own form or reputation. Though he’s in the same stage of his career as Tendulkar, but Lara actually has still been playing good test cricket and carrying the burden of a declining team.
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<FONT face=Verdana>So Bashar is acting well within the mentality that our nation and/ or subcontinent has injected in him; so asking him acting any different would be no short of a miracle. And talking about miracle, we all know that he is NO Steve Waugh, so hoping for his form to comeback in any form of cricket is a hope against hope.
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<FONT face=Verdana>One other thing that is factoring in Bashar’s decision is that cricket is his passion and his bread and butter, giving up cricket in any form and loosing either of those two is a life changing event which surely has its own downside.
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<FONT face=Verdana>I am not really supporting Bashar to continue this drama or even stay as a captain or as an oneday player any longer then the end of the test series against <st1:country-region w:st="<st1:place" Verdana?><FONT face=Verdana>against <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, rather trying to analyze why we should be patient in giving him a bit more time to take this life changing decision.<o:p></o:p>
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Bashar’s lack of decisiveness on the retirement issue is as apparent as his batting lately and needless to say his captaincy. Since there have been millions of threads on his poor batting and captaincy on this board, I will save you from the boredom by not talking about it rather what I really want to focus on why Bashar is unsure of his own fate though it is in his own hand. Bashar can take a simple decision and put an end to all the bashing (that he’s got within the last few months) and possibly save his reputation for the future. But what’s making it harder for him to escape all these abuse is the attraction of being in the limelight even if for all the wrong reasons. But the question is, can we really blame him? Let’s find out.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comhttp://www.banglacricket.com/alochona/ /><o:p></o:p>
<font face=" /><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana>I think the way Bashar is acting is indicative of our national attitude to life and thus a problem for our country. We as a nation, whether in sports or economic development or anything else, is very much success starved and so are the individuals that belong within. Once one of us manages to succeed in life and comes under limelight, it’s very hard to give that up and our cricketers are no different of who most are from families that are either economically and/ or professionally success deprived. When these players gain success by virtue of their hard work and talent and get used to being the focus of the nation, it is virtually impossible for them to give up that lifestyle even when they reach their shelf lives.
<FONT face=Verdana>
<FONT face=Verdana>Now to justify my point, let’s look at the cricket players of the successful (I mean not just cricket, but other sports, economy, education, etc.) nations who actually know when to quit. If we just look at the recent retirements of all the great players we will see that they all retired at the peak of their career, especially the Australian players. We all know how well Warne and McGrath (I am not going to even bring up Steve Waugh) were playing when they decided to put away their boots. Surely they were top of their games, surely they could’ve carried on at least couple of more years, but they wanted to retire with their heads held high. Not that all the players from the rich nations come from rich families, but they got the right molding when growing up. On the contrary, look at Tendulkar still trying to break records after records and on the process getting criticized by so many ex-great players and the fans of his country that used to worship him as a GOD. The fact that he belongs to the subcontinent (which we are a bi-product of) makes him the victim of the same mentality which tells him to carry on till he is taken out of the shelf. I wouldn’t bring Lara’s retirement in this argument because his retirement has to do more with the abysmal state of WI cricket then his own form or reputation. Though he’s in the same stage of his career as Tendulkar, but Lara actually has still been playing good test cricket and carrying the burden of a declining team.
<FONT face=Verdana>
<FONT face=Verdana>So Bashar is acting well within the mentality that our nation and/ or subcontinent has injected in him; so asking him acting any different would be no short of a miracle. And talking about miracle, we all know that he is NO Steve Waugh, so hoping for his form to comeback in any form of cricket is a hope against hope.
<FONT face=Verdana><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana>One other thing that is factoring in Bashar’s decision is that cricket is his passion and his bread and butter, giving up cricket in any form and loosing either of those two is a life changing event which surely has its own downside.
<FONT face=Verdana>
<FONT face=Verdana><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana><o:p></o:p>
<FONT face=Verdana>I am not really supporting Bashar to continue this drama or even stay as a captain or as an oneday player any longer then the end of the test series against <st1:country-region w:st="<st1:place" Verdana?><FONT face=Verdana>against <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, rather trying to analyze why we should be patient in giving him a bit more time to take this life changing decision.<o:p></o:p>
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