Empty seats mark Mirpur's 100th

Bangladesh is often called a cricket-mad nation, but that characterisation was hard to justify yesterday at the halfway stage of the tri-series match between Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. The electronic scoreboard had the words 'Celebrating 100 ODIs at Sher-e-Bangla Cricket Stadium' written on it, but just below the scoreboard the stands were barely occupied, making the word 'celebration' ring especially hollow.

One would have been hard pressed to count 100 spectators during the first half of the match, once the large numbers of volunteers and police personnel were subtracted. With just 11 years, one month and nine days between Mirpur's first match and its 100th, the venue is the fastest to reach the mark, making the occasion even more worthy of celebration.

"We were just talking about it with some other spectators," Shaon, a student who came out to get a glimpse of the cricket even though it did not involve the home team, said yesterday. "If this match involved Bangladesh, there would have been a lot more spectators and the atmosphere would have been a lot more festive. And if they won the match in Mirpur's 100th ODI, that would have been even more special."

Sitting with a whole section of the gallery below the scoreboard to himself, he added: "I only came to know of it being Mirpur's 100th match after I came to the ground, when I saw it written on the scoreboard before the match started. I did not see any banners outside the ground marking the landmark."

"I won't say that the BCB [Bangladesh Cricket Board] did not know about the milestone; but they must not have known about it before the scheduling was agreed upon, as then Bangladesh would have been playing today."

Instead, the Tigers were relegated to the Academy Ground for a practice session in the morning on the historic occasion.

"It would have been great if Bangladesh could play the 100th match hosted in Mirpur -- It would have been a great opportunity for us," said Bangladesh fast bowler Rubel Hossain after practice yesterday.

The occasion mattered enough for Bangladesh ODI captain Mashrafe Bin Mortaza to come into the ground after the match had started and post a selfie with Mirpur's oldest groundsman Abdul Motin on his Facebook page.

It would have fallen upon BCB's grounds committee to be aware of the looming landmark, but evidently that did not happen. If they did in fact fail to notice, it is just another instance of there being scant value given to domestic institutions by the BCB, most recently illustrated in the lack of first-class statistics about Tushar Imran and Abdur Razzak, who became the first Bangladeshis to the 10,000-run and 500-wicket marks respectively.

BCB president Nazmul Hassan, who was at the ground yesterday to honour match referee David Boon's 100th match in charge, managed to be unapologetic about the perceived oversight while also saying that it would have been better had Bangladesh featured in the match.

"Yes, you can say that we could have kept Bangladesh in the 100th ODI," said Hassan yesterday, before resorting to a leap of logic that can only be covered by the BCB boss's flights of fancy. "In the first match Zimbabwe and [Hamilton] Masakadza featured, the same as today. I think in that sense that is okay."

Zimbabwe's opposition in that first match on December 8, 2006, were Bangladesh.

"And there was some uncertainty regarding the fixtures; Zimbabwe delayed in coming so we could not be sure. If not, then it could have been done... it would have been better."

Shaon's guess about BCB coming to know of the landmark late seems a good one, and that accidental neglect is better than the alternative: that they chose to neglect it.