Bangladesh have become the first team to be knocked out of the 2023 World Cup, and the fault is nobody’s but theirs.
The enormous Eden Gardens, half-full or thereabouts for a non-India match on a weekday, began to empty out long before Mohammad Rizwan and Iftikhar Ahmed performed the final rites.
Fans in green and red had sung and cheered their way into the stadium hours ago. Some flaunted the stuffed tigers. Some wore shirts bearing the name of Shakib Al Hasan, their captain and the greatest cricketer in their history. Some carried banners proclaiming how Tamim Iqbal was missed.
Now, the entire cohort of Shakib’s left in a slow trickle past an infallible lone fan, who held up a defiant ‘We are always with you, Team Tiger’ banner.
There had been reports of thousands of Bangladesh fans travelling to Kolkata, their nearest World Cup venue and a city that shared their language, for their two World Cup matches.
Many had returned after the Dutch humiliation, foregoing the more high-profile of the two matches against Pakistan. Now the rest walked back dejected, after watching their heroes suffer the ignominy of being the first team to be knocked out of the World Cup.
It was not supposed to be like this, not now, not at this World Cup. After all, Bangladesh had finished third, above India, Australia, and South Africa, in the 2020-23 World Cup Super League to qualify for the big tournament.
So what went wrong? Bangladesh came into the World Cup without Tamim and Ebadot Hossain but with everyone else. Did they miss Ebadot? Perhaps they did, but Mustafizur Rahman, Taskin Ahmed, Shoriful Islam, and Hasan Mahmud are, at least on paper, a reasonable attack.
Tamim, of course, was a major blow on at least two counts. Despite his recent misses, including this World Cup, he is still Bangladesh’s leading ODI run-scorer. Someone like that was always going to be difficult to replace.
But perhaps just as significant was the manner in which Tamim opted out, after a phone call from a board official. What transpired – a social media video from Tamim, an video interview of Shakib – was exactly the kind of murk between two seniors that a team wants to stay clear of ahead of a long, gruelling tournament. So they showed up with a Tamim-shaped hole, and a Shakib without any batting form, fresh from a controversy.
To be fair, they began well. Afghanistan raced to 83-1 in their first outing, but Bangladesh hit back to bowl them out for 156. Shakib claimed three wickets, as did Mehidy, who also hit a fifty; they won with more than 15 overs in hand. So far, so good.
Then everything fell apart as they suffered six consecutive defeats. Even in defeats, teams sometimes remain in the contest for a period of time before the superior side prevails; but barring their opening stand against India and – perhaps – their bowling effort against the Netherlands, Bangladesh have failed to leave any mark in six matches in a row.
