Suneer Chowdhary
( Cricket Writer)
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Such has been the impact of the IPL that the tri-series between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will have a lot of catching up to do, both in terms of the quality of the cricket, and the excitement it generates, for it to even register in the minds of the audiences across these countries.

With the kind of form that Bangladesh had exhibited in the 2007 World Cup, one would have expected them to take that next step in the ladder. The progress has been stifled and progress has not reflected in the results since then. Ever since the World Cup, Bangladesh are yet to win a Test or an ODI against a Test playing country, and their only wins have come against Ireland. Add that to the 5-0 whitewash at the hands of a second string Pakistani team at the beginning of the Indian Premier League, and one knows that they have a lot of catching up to do. In fact, it is not so much the 5-0 score line, but the margins of losses that would have affected the morale of the team, the closest they came was when they lost by 23 runs, the other four included two 150 runs and a couple of seven wicket losses.

In turn, they are also being led by a captain, who for all his talent with the bat, averages only 22 in the shorter variety of the game, and 24 in Tests. This is hardly an average one would expect from the captain, especially someone who has shown a lot of promise. His penchant for playing unreasonable strokes at the queerest of times has led to his downfall and that of his team on more occasions than one. This includes the series against Pakistan where he scored only 81 runs in the five matches he played in, clearly a pointer to a man not in the best of form. And with bad form comes the pressure of expectation of winning, from a cricket-crazy country. It would be only fair to say that the two would be weighing Ashraful down heavily, and the earliest he comes into his own with the bat, the better it would be for the team.

There were only four instances in the previous series when a Bangladeshi batsman crossed the fifty run mark, and that included a hundred by Shakib Al Hasan. Shakib Al Hasan is one all-rounder whom many would look at to carry the team, both as an opener and as a left arm spinner, to throttle the flow of runs. The team has some good bowlers in – the recently elevated to vice-captaincy – Mashrafe Mortaza and Abdur Razzaq, but the decline in the quality beyond this motley is rather steep.

With the experience of Habibul Bashar being ignored for the series and Aftab Ahmed pulling out because of his injuries, the responsibility of competing – let alone winning – would lie on the shoulders of the skipper and the other senior players. However, with a resurgent Pakistani team, and a side on high after beating Australia in their own den, India, Bangladesh need to come up with some answers. And it must be quick…