Deja vu all over again

Sri Lankan cricket writer Andrew Fidel Fernando wrote a very animated satire titled ‘ Here’s a massively premature review of the World Cup’ for Cricinfo a couple of days ago.

In that review he touched upon all ten teams but in the Bangladesh section he made an interesting observation. In the ‘low point’ section, he wrote: “The loss to India. It hasn’t happened yet. But we pretty much all know it will.”

He was spot on. Bangladesh suffered a 28-run defeat against India at Edgbaston yesterday and with it the World Cup dream of the ‘loudest fans’ (according to Fernando) ended with a whimper.

It was another painful defeat for the Tigers against a team that they are seemingly obsessed with beating, but a team that somehow manages to make them always press the self-destruct button. India are certainly a better side and deserved not only to make it to the semifinals; they have all the ingredients to win the World Cup for a third time.

But Bangladesh have developed a disturbing tendency of buckling under pressure whenever they have faced the mighty Indians over the past four years. That was again on display yesterday.

Bangladesh needed an early breakthrough to stop the Indians if there were to be any hopes of batting them out before the contest had reached the half way mark. They got their opportunity when Rohit Sharma top-edged a pull against Mustafizur Rahman to the mid-wicket boundary. The Indian opener was on nine at the time and his Bangladesh counterpart Tamim Iqbal ran from the deep square-leg boundary to complete what would have been a regulation catch. But Tamim, one of the safest pairs of hands in the Bangladesh ranks, spilled it.

The impact was devastating. Rohit went on to hit a 92-ball 104, his fourth hundred in this World Cup. By the time he left, he had lain a foundation on which India could have scored over 350. Thankfully, Mustafizur arrested that avalanche of runs with his first five-wicket haul in the tournament. India eventually finished on 314-9.

It might have been a good score to defend on a wicket that became slower as the match progressed. But the Tigers batsmen were more to be blamed than the quality of the Indian attack for failing to chase down that stiff target. All the top six batsmen got starts but failed to carry on, save Shakib Al Hasan who struck a fighting 66.

Tamim, his opening partner Soumya Sarkar, an otherwise dependable Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das all were subjected to soft dismissals and that too at a time when they looked like taking the game away from India’s firm grip.

Tamim chopped a Mohammad Shami delivery onto his stumps, Soumya cracked a rank long-hop from Hardik Pandya straight to the throat of Indian captain Virat Kohli at cover, Mushfiqur mistimed a sweep shot against leg spinner Yuzvendra Chahal to Shami at short square leg and Liton top-edged an attempted pull against Pandya to Dinesh Karthik.

Had both Mushfiqur and Liton, who were playing so well in the company of Shakib, curbed their natural strokemaking instincts and focused more on building a partnership, it could have been a different story. They refused to take the game deep, which was where the Tigers lost the plot.

Sabbir Rahman and Mohammad Saifuddin produced a very interesting 50-plus stand for the seventh wicket. And it could have turned gold had their predecessors carried on the innings till at least the 40th over.

It was good to see Sabbir get runs but it was the calmness of Saifudddin and his approach in a superb unbeaten 50 that was the biggest plus point in a defeat. He was stuck at the other end when Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah dismissed the last two batsmen with perfect yorkers off successive deliveries.

With two more overs still to go, the young all-rounder in the making left Tigers fans pondering what could have been had he gotten the chance to play those 12 legal deliveries.

But more importantly for the Tigers as a unit it was yet another opportunity lost to overcome the Indian hoodoo.