…Bangladesh in Asiad Cricket…

After a disastrous Caribbean Cricket Safari Bangladesh Cricket under its most committed Cricket star of recent years favorite of Mashrafee Bin Murtataza is set to defend its Asian Games cricket title .Bangladesh male team won the Gold Cup in 2010 beating Afghanistan in the final while the women’s team also achieved the silver losing in the final against Pakistan. The Cricket matches of the Asian Games now being held at Inchon, South Korea will start tomorrow.

Apart from Bangladesh , Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, China, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives and hosts South Korea. India and Pakistan are not participating in male section of cricket and Sri Lanka is not sending the national team. Judging from the participating team and considering a full strength Bangladesh there are little reason why Mashrafee squad must not successfully defend its title.

The team that will appear in Asain Games is as under
Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), Tamim Iqbal, Anamul Haque, Imrul Kayes, Mohammad Mithun, Shamsur Rahman, Shakib Al Hasan, Shuvagata Hom, Sabbir Rahman, Mahmudullah, Nasir Hossain, Arafat Sunny, Muktar Ali, Rubel Hossain, Taskin Ahmed.

We were discussing about the progress of cricket in ICC associate member countries in Asia with ACC Development Officer Aminul Islam Bulbul in Melbourne when we last met. He said Cricket in Afghanistan, Nepal, China and Hong Kong is advancing appreciably. Bangladesh may find it little beat difficult this time .But given the much greater experience of international cricket he agreed with me that Bangladesh should defend the title. Bulbul thought the real challenge may come from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. We discussed about Bangladesh losing to Afghanistan and Hong Kong beating Bangladesh in the recent past.

In cricket especially in the limited over version of the game anything can happen. A spirited team with a committed performance can upset the favorites. Hence Bangladesh must not be complacent and must not take any opponent lightly.

Bangladesh must watch out Afghanistan. I know about Afghanistan cricket team. Having lived there for over four years I am aware of their commitment. They have some genuinely good quality pace bowlers in Hamid Hasan, Zardans and some hard hitting batsmen who can surprise even any leading test team .They are very disciplined .Some of them played in BPL and are aware of Bangladesh cricket .Last time they went down fighting to Bangladesh. This time the team is more experienced and more battle hardened.

We have nothing much to say about the team composition excepting that why again four openers are selected in the team when the middle order looked fragile with complete loss of form of Nasir .With Mushfique not available for personal reason Bangladesh could be better served with an additional middle order batsman . Where is Naeem Islam? Has he fallen out of grace for some reason? Why not he could be given a try here? He is one of the better finisher. Even Zia could be given another try.

This team has very strong bowling attack .We will be surprised in Mashrafee, Taskin , Rubel, Sakib and Arafat Sunny cannot bowl Bangladesh to win the Gold Medal in Asiad .The batsmen have to play to potential .The return of Sakib will add diversity in the team . Tamim, Anamul, Shamsur Rahman and Mahamudullah must have learned lesson from their nightmarish experience in West Indies.

Mashrafee and Taskin have ability to made early inroads into opposition batting and with Sakib and Sunny in the team stifling opposition batting should be that difficult especially the batsmen of associate members other than Sri Lanka and Afghanistan hardly have opportunities to play such quality bowling. Mashrafee is always an inspiring leader and he has all the experience in his hat what to and what not to do to mess up the situation as has happened with the team in the recent past. We hope team management will leave the matter of handling the match on the captain and will not poke their nose too much.

BCB must not think that a Gold Medal winning performance should make cricket lovers forget about recent abysmal performance of the team mostly emanating from mismanagement of BCB in all affairs. Not winning gold by the men’s team will rather be a surprise .But nothing should be taken as granted as most of the other teams will consider Bangladesh as the team to beat to prove their point. Bangladesh male and female team winning the Gold from Korea will give huge boost to the sagging morale of Bangladesh Cricket team with series against Zimbabwe and ICC World Cup in not too distant future.