[mcruic]

In January, Bangladesh managed to lose only 1-0 to Nepal in the South Asian Games. So, it's not impossible, but it will be very difficult. I would expect, in all honesty, a 3-0 or 4-0 win for Nepal. Bangladesh will therefore need to defend very well. I would also expect India to score at least 6 against Pakistan in their semi-final, and perhaps even as many as 10.

I think it would be good to have a 3rd place match in this tournament, but it doesn't look like there is one scheduled. It would probably be Bangladesh v Pakistan. Teams at this level need all the practice matches they can get so they can compete on the Asian stage.

After this, Bangladesh will play in the 2012 Olympic qualifiers where they will host one of the preliminary round groups. Bangladesh has been drawn with India and Uzbekistan, and all matches will be played in Dhaka. Uzbekistan are about the same as India in terms of quality, so this will be a very hard 2 matches for Bangladesh. The matches are on 18th March 2011 (v India) and 20th March (v Uzbekistan). India will play Uzbekistan on 22nd March. The group winners will reach the next stage of qualifying.

Bangladesh has now firmly established themselves as the number 3 team in South Asia, and they must now work on closing the gap between themselves and Nepal. If not, then it won't be long before the other 5 teams in the region catch up on Bangladesh. Even a league with as little as 4 teams would be a start. Even if all the teams are based in Dhaka. It would be a start. It would allow the players to play some regular matches to keep up their fitness levels and improve their focus.

And one final thing - one important reason (which wasn't mentioned above) that India is so far ahead of the rest, is because they have been playing as a national team since the 1980s - that's almost 30 years of a head start.