A bittersweet year

The outgoing 2021 has been a bittersweet year for Bangladesh cricket as the passing year gave some joyous moments to celebrate, but failure in the ICC T20 World Cup left a few questions.

The first joyful moment for Bangladesh in 2021 was the arrival of the West Indies cricket team in Dhaka, the first cricket team to tour Bangladesh since Covid-19 broke out, scrambling the cricket schedule of 2020.

The team consisted of fringe and inexperienced cricketers as most frontline Caribbean players refused to travel. Bangladesh won all three One-Day Internationals quite convincingly.

Followed by the ODI series, there was a two-match Test series where the Caribbeans fielded a young and inexperienced team too, despite the series being part of the ICC Test Championship. But Bangladesh lost both matches.

In July, Bangladesh toured Zimbabwe, where they played a one-off Test against the hosts, marked as the farewell Test of Mahmudullah.

Mahmudullah scored his career-best 150* at Harare in a complex situation, ensured the victory, and expressed his desire to retire from Test cricket to his teammates, who later gave him a ‘guard of honour’. His official announcement though came almost after four months.

Bangladesh did well in Zimbabwe. They won the Test and the three-match ODI series by 3-0 and the T20I series by 2-1.

From Zimbabwe, the Bangladesh cricketers jumped straight into their first-ever T20I series against Australia. Five matches were held at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium within seven days, and that too inside a strict bio-secure bubble where no other guests inside the team hotel and not even shaking hands after the match.

Bangladesh won the series 4-1, their first-ever series win over Australia in any format. But this win cost them heavily later.

Immediately after that series, New Zealand arrived in Bangladesh to play another five-match T20I series. Bangladesh won that series 3-2.

Both Australia and New Zealand sent their second-string teams to Bangladesh to keep their key players fatigue-free before the ICC T20 World Cup. New Zealand did not include a single player from their T20 World Cup squad for the Bangladesh tour.

Consecutive matches played over sluggish surfaces became almost like a minefield for the batsmen camouflaged Bangladeshi batsmen’s shortcomings, as all the matches were low-scoring and the bowlers were doing well in favourable conditions.

But in the T20 World Cup in Oman and UAE, the situation completely changed, which was very predictable, and Bangladesh paid heavily. Or it could be the head coach Russell Domingo and the cricket administrators who reaped off this phoney success.

Domingo bagged a new contract, most of the BCB officials, including incumbent BCB President Nazmul Hassan, won another tenure almost unchallenged, as the election of BCB directors was held this year.

The alarm bell for Bangladesh was ringing from the warm-up matches, and the tournament started horrifically for the Tigers.

They lost their opening game of the ICC T20 World Cup to Scotland, struggled against Oman, and only managed to win convincingly against Papua New Guinea to secure a spot in the Super 12.

In the Super 12, Bangladesh lost all five matches, were bowled under a hundred twice and got heavily criticised by the former cricketers. Cricketers got engaged in a verbal tug of war with fans or cricket administration, and their family members started quarrelling on social media and all together, it was chaos for Bangladesh Cricket.

Bad times continued as Pakistan came to Bangladesh right after their spirited campaign in the World Cup, and they thrashed Bangladesh in both the T20I and Test series, ending the misery for the Tigers for 2021.

Wonder Women

The year 2021 has been a watershed moment for Bangladesh women’s national team. Firstly, along with all other ICC full-member teams, they also received Test status as per the decision made in the ICC meeting.

They also qualified for the World Cup for the first time. They took part in the qualifier tournament in Zimbabwe, but it was called off due to the contagious omicron variant of Covid-19.

But as per the playing conditions, Bangladesh received a slot in the World Cup, based on their ODI rankings, along with Pakistan and the West Indies.

The Kick

Despite many international matches in 2021, the most significant moment of the year came in a domestic match, where Mohammedan’s Shakib Al Hasan kicked and uprooted the stumps during a match against Abahani in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League.

After being turned down by the umpire for an appeal of the leg before the wicket, Shakib kicked the stumps, got engaged in a verbal tussle with the umpire, and finally uprooted the stumps, and threw them on the ground. That incident showed the true image of Bangladesh cricket.