Heavyweight punch by a perceived lightweight!

Playing against India on its home ground, where they had inflicted series defeats on New Zealand and England, was like pushing a boulder up a steep mountain top. But we made it look like we were almost there making light of the uphill task with some entertaining, fighting cricket.

A Bangladesh win at Hyderabad was perhaps the remotest in any cricket professional's mind. So we thought a draw would be a win for Bangladesh. And now, we are saying that despite the defeat, our gains have been substantial. We said that after the series debacle against New Zealand, we are saying it again after the one-off against India.

After 17 years of playing Test cricket, yes, we have moved from 3-4 days in a Test match to 5 days; yes, we are 'certified' as having graduated from 'an improving side' to 'an improved side. But why—after brilliant individual flashes signalling an amazing comeback or creating opportunities for moving past the opponent in a subsequent session—does our grip on the proceedings invariably slip back to our opponent? This is a familiar story of our failing to convert breakthroughs into an illumined team success.

In the modern era, I take the view, hopefully resonating with the reader, that it is melodramatic nonsense to be consoling ourselves with the decades having been taken by India or New Zealand to come to the stage that they have; and we are only 17 years into Tests. Yet, in those one and a half decades, we have played very few Test matches.

 What could be a more propitious time for the news that the BCB has almost confirmed a deal with South African legend Jonty Rhodes to be our fielding consultant. Richard Halsall is the current fielding coach of Bangladesh and with Jonty an important value addition to the fielding side is getting underway. Also, former Indian left arm spinner Sunil Joshi is all set to join as the spin bowling consultant. We already have Courtney Walsh mentoring the pace department.

A full measure of logistical and training support mechanism is being put in place. This obligates the BCB, BKSP and the whole lot of the playing community to put their shoulders to the wheel and deliver the goods.

The crystallised view of cricket professionals is that we should by all means avoid making a mess of team selections for all formats of the game, more so in Test cricket. We shall have to groom, develop, evolve and stick with two clear-cut national teams, one for the Tests and the other for the shorter versions of the game.

Rather than last minute scrounging for cobbling a loosely knit team flaccid at the edges we must have self-contained combinations in battle-ready condition. The tested and tried ones are 5-6 in number, so that they may be constants. It is the remainder equal number with whom we experiment too much adding a soft belly to the team fielded. If the players are on the learning curve, so too are the managers.

Of course, there should be a quality spare capacity to cover contingencies like injuries which are increasingly becoming a part of the high-voltage competitive cricket scenarios.

The supply chain of domestic cricketers revolves around the first class matches. This is for the longer version of the game which must not be allowed to be subsumed by national cricket. Thankfully, these are having a momentum of their own lately, a trend that needs to be encouraged to boost national cricket like in the case of top cricketing nations.     

Bangladesh was resisting the kiss of death on the borderline of the fourth session on the fifth day of the Hyderabad Test. An Indian commentator boomed at the curtains on Bangladesh's innings with a clear hint of circumspection and admiration. "It is a hard-fought win," as Bangladesh resisted outright capitulation with grit, determination and gumption in the face of a monumental chasing target.

In the first place, India's mammoth total was not so much a reflection of their batting prowess as it was that of our below-par bowling and fielding performances. Captain Mushfiqur Rahim pointed it out risking a measure of self-criticism with that happening under his charge. His own performance left little to be desired.

The senior batsmen failed to build partnerships after having started well to reach 20-plus runs barring, of course, a few notable exceptions. In matters of defence, an important tactic for a team fighting to draw a match, Kamrul set an example. A relatively newcomer as a bowler and a tail-ender batsman he could withstand 70 balls while some of his seniors crumbled under short bursts.

This is not to take away the credit from our batsmen like Shakib, Mushfiqur, Soumya, Mahmudullah, Mehedi, Mominul and Sabbir. They occupied the crease for varyingly long spells making the Indian bowling look for those stretches toothless. Likewise, in general, several of their batsmen played our bowlers with a devastating effect to amass that daunting total.

On balance, Hyderabad Test must go down as an effective public relations event. Even as a commercial success, Indian organisers had been chary about crowd-pulling potential of matches against Bangladesh. Now that our brand of fighting and entertaining cricket has won admirers in India, we can only hope that the jinx is broken opening the way for serious bilateral series between India and Bangladesh.

On a final note, we have to take the negatives as seriously as the positives. That said, you cannot help feeling that India plays cricket more as a culture than perhaps as a game. In a game it is like hop-step-and-jump where you leave a footmark on the sand to be measured with a tape as a mark of progress or regression. When cricket is played as a culture, you expect a wholehearted, charged participation in it. And, you focus on each ball to yield a result, taking the contest between the bat and the ball to an entirely new height of tension and anticipation. The animation is incomparable.

The writer is a current affairs commentator and former Associate Editor, The Daily Star.

E-mail: shahhusainimam@gmail.com