the future looks bright

[al Furqaan]

i wrote a front page article not long ago and mentioned that bangladesh had improved tremendously in the last year under dav whatmore's guidance. i wrote this before the disastrous asia cup. i also wrote that the biggest challenges had yet to be met, and that disappointments were inevitable although ultimate victory was ours.

after the embarrassing losses to pakistan, india and SL, i was very dissappointed as were all other fans and the tigers themselves. however one must note one thing: except rana, ash, razzaq, and javed omar, all our players have played far below their potential. true most of players dont click at the same time, but our players can only get better.

our biggest batting dissappointment can be blamed on exactly 2 players: rajin and bashar. if they get into form, we may not win but we will be darn close. its only a matter of time before they click. alok has not been in form for quite some time now so he is not to blame for this tourney.

everyone knows the negatives of asia cup 2004, so here are the positives:

1) most importantly the emergence of ashraful as an opener, can be paired with either JO or rana
2) restricting india to 4.6 runs per over after they blistered us for 22 in the first
3) keeping Pak in the neighborhood of 250
4) razzaq's bowling
5) scoring at almost 5 an over in the first 10 overs against both india and pakistan

as i said it may take anywhere from 2-10 years for us to reach the level of india, pakistan, and SL...i think it will happen.

our under-19 boys are gettin the right experience because of players like ash, mashrafee, rajin, and others. these guys are on the national team and are playing decently well and thereby are keeping the selectors from having to resorot to putting in nafis iqbal, nafees ahmed, and aftab ahmed, and enamul jr. in the national squad. this is exactly what happened with ash, rajin, masri, etc. they played in the national team before they were ready because the selectors had no other choice.

i think in 2 years time, the aforementioned U-19s will be ready for the national stage, then our batting and bowling will be stronger, in addition, we will still have rajin, ash, and masri, still in their early 20s. i am writing this post for one reason only: TO CONVINCE MYSELF AND OTHERS THAT BANGLADESH HAVE A BRIGHT FUTURE AHEAD.

our asia cup has not been successful, but hey there is one more game left against pakistan. i hope for a 99 northampton occurrence but dont expect it.

even if we fail miserbaly, it will because one or more of our batsmen dont get their act together. but they soon will, and when they do...we'll all be singing a different song than we have been for the last week or so.

[Bangla Mostan]

True to what the brother said, there are some positives like Dav mentioned. The experiment of having Ash shifted up in the batting order has slowly and steadily proved to be usefull as well as his partnership with Javed Omar who himself has proved to be useful

Also Razzaq proving his call up to the squad and playing with discipline and takin wickets. So we have players that have very much established themselves in the squad for a very long time.

However we have to re-assess the players who can not give any more then they can, hence they below-par performances.

Then we can make a total judgement on their perfomance and see which players will be in the squad for a very long time and which players will hang up thier shirts.