BanglaCricket Article

It still hurts. A few days have passed but the pain lingers. It is not so much the repeated defeats but the manner in which they were inflicted. It seems the players almost do not care. We see the wrong attitude but are given the same old platitude. We got tired of Bashar's post match comments. I am sure even he found it embarrassing. Have you noticed how fast Ashraful is learning on the job. "Yes, we will learn from our mistakes." I have already heard it three times.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel ? Well, the bulb needs to be changed. Whether the bulb is the metaphor for our players or selectors I do not know. Possibly both.

In this state of despair, I have done some little research. Despite, all these platitudes, hardly any evidence exists of any sustained improvement however meagre. Dav Whatmore may have brought some discipline in one day bowling. This is what the mark sheet says after four years ! I have come up with a statistic which I have called the Imbalance Index. It could also be termed the Domination Index. It is correlated to a side's domination or the lack of it. It is simply the ratio of a team's batting average over its bowling average. Bangladesh's overall Imbalance Index over 49 tests is 0.38

As will be seen later, the recent Sri Lanka series was the second worst performance by Bangladesh in any series where two or more tests were played. Since the index measures the worth of each wicket, it truly reflects the balance of power. So the true dominance exerted by Sri Lanka, for example, scoring 500 in one innings but also losing only 4 wickets in the process is also taken into account. The index of the other test playing countries' in this decade [2000's] are as follows:

As expected, Australia is on top of the pile. Each Australian wicket on average scores 60% more runs than their opponents. A staggering statistic. Sri Lanka's position is slightly inflated by playing Bangladesh more often than any other country. Of the 49 tests Bangladesh have played, 10 were against Sri Lanka. Their record against Zimbabwe is also 100%.

So what is Bangladesh's current position relative to its score in the last six years? As can be seen from the next table, Bangladesh dominated only one series, against Zimbabwe, when the team won the series 1 - 0. Great rearguard batting by Javed Omar and Nafis Iqbal saved the second test. A rare instance of Bangladesh eeking out a draw. It was effectively a third string Zimbabwe though. The series against Pakistan in Pakistan in 2003, when we came close to a win in Multan is the closest series Bangladesh actually contested barring the Zimbabwe home series in 2004/05. In fact, it was last year against Sri Lanka and who can forget Australia [ in one test only ] that Bangladesh were half as good as their opponents. Also against England at home in 2003.

It was indeed against England in 2005 that the biggest drubbing was received. England only lost six wickets in amassing those runs. No wonder each English wicket were worth nine times more than a Bangladesh wicket notwithstanding Aftab's brilliant 82 not out and a characteristic 71 from Omar at Chester-le-Street. Each English wicket cost a monumental 162 runs. The II equals just 0.11

The last column indicates whether the index for that particular series was better or worse than the overall 0.38. Here the pattern is truly mixed. It would seem that in 2003/04 we played four series in a row where the index was higher than the average. The worst run of performance started in 2001/02 when we had four consecutive series which were below our extremely low average. In fact, in 2005/06 relative to our standards, we did reasonably well against Sri Lanka and Australia at home. Lastly, the same statistic can be presented in terms of the contemporary captain.

It would appear that Bashar's term was the best. But bear in mind, Taibu's third rate Zimbabwians visited Bangladesh during this time and Enam destroyed them single-handedly. Ashraful's term started as we know miserably but it is too early to call.

After receiving a sound thrashing from the Lankans, Bangladesh's next mission is against the Black Caps at their home soil in November-December 2007. A young team with an average age of 22 can only get better? After going through all the stats do you see any light at the end of the tunnel? You have to live in hope. After all, the Kiwis index is only 0.98!