Rob Houwing

I know, I know, it’s all very PC and fuzzy feel-good to talk of “expanding cricket’s frontiers” and “helping the minnows come out of the shadows”.

Why, there is even talk – in the November edition of The Wisden Cricketer (UK) -- that China could be a major force in 10 years.

Yeah, right … just like Bangladesh, around 1998, were no doubt touted to be just that themselves by 2008.

Only Bangladesh haven’t quite achieved that lofty expectation. They remain stubbornly ninth and last on the ICC Test rankings table, with a farcical, glaringly fat zero in rating points to their name. (Top-placed Australia have 138 points and even dozy, eighth-ranked West Indies 81, by way of perspective.)

In 55 Test matches since their introduction to the arena in 2000, Bangladesh have won precisely one of them, a 2005 match against a Zimbabwe team already well on the slippery slope to turmoil and virtual ruin, in line with the nation itself.

Unlike Sri Lanka who, by the ninth year of their Test existence in 1991, lost just one of their six matches against New Zealand, England and Pakistan – a compelling here-to-stay signal – Bangladesh have made no such strides. They may well have lurched backwards.

Fish out of water? I’d say it’s worse than that, and the situation doesn’t look like stabilising -- never mind improving -- with any haste, especially with several “big-name” Bangladeshis seduced by the lucre waved in front of them by one of the world’s burgeoning array of Twenty20 circuses.

The country has some tenacious (but only that) cricketers and passionate followers, and I feel for them. But the game’s global fabric has changed violently in recent months – maybe more violently than some people even realise.

A big, almost out-of-control scheduling squeeze is on and, cold truth be told, a Test series against Bangladesh has become an unviable drag, a mere statutory obligation, for every nation above them.

Ho-hum and ho-hum again

Ah, but what about when South Africa were bowled out for 170 in their first innings at Mirpur, earlier this very year? I would retort that for every short-lived Mirpur “mirage” there is also a reality-check Chittagong, where the Proteas passed 400 without loss of a wicket, just a few days on, and duly won the series 2-0 anyway. Ho-hum and ho-hum again.

And if you are going to defend Bangladesh on the flimsy grounds of sessions or hours of sporadic home Test supremacy, then you might as well venture that Holland deserve full ODI status because they beat South Africa once in a rain-reduced meeting at the fag end of a gruelling England tour, or Ireland because they upset split-personality Pakistan one eventful “we were great, they were terrible” day in the Caribbean.

Very shortly, Bangladesh will be fitted in on our shores – a la the currently-visiting Kenya -- for as short a time as is humanly possible (given that the trip isn’t going to burst any bank or buckle any turnstile). If the weather plays ball, you would not expect either Test to go much beyond three days.

And on our pacier pitches, this “international” team, ironically enough, will in all likelihood have helped less in South Africa’s preparations for Australia than another few precious, all-too-rare franchise appearances would have done instead for the Proteas regulars.

At least a stronger semblance of strength-versus-strength would have prevailed in the latter case!

No, in this climate of unseemly scramble for the Twenty20 attentions of the world’s most flamboyant cricketers and consequent, ever-gnawing marginalisation of the five-day game, there simply can be no further room for soft Test series.

Banish Bangladesh to Benoni or Darwin or Chester-le-Street, if you wish, in an insincere attempt to “promote the game in the backwaters”, but the core problem won’t go away.

All that these soulless contests -- played out before handfuls of spectators and the limited extra swelling the press-box provides -- will do is hasten the format’s demise, and paint a damaging, uncool image at a time when, really, the reverse is required.

Competitive, entertaining and highly popular


I think Bangladesh have got to go, at least from a five-day point of view, as the most feasible ICC “itinerary uncluttering” solution.

It’s regrettable, but necessary in the new world order.

Perhaps the way ahead for them is to spiritedly put all their eggs in 20- and 50-overs baskets, aiming to become a more credible force in these formats?

It reminds me of the way Zimbabwean rugby reinvented itself, to a good degree, soon after deciding to abandon the 15-man code and focus on sevens. When I watched them play the World Cup Sevens in Hong Kong in 1997, they were competitive, entertaining and highly popular.

I’m afraid that, through necessity, Bangladesh’s Test cricket status ought to become increasingly less, rather than more assured.
I somehow hope, for the sake of the five-day game’s very survival rather than with any malicious intent, that their second Test-level safari to South Africa is also their last ...

- Rob is the Chief Writer at Sport24

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