Smug Shakib, clueless Bangladesh

Witty replies at pressers, an abundance of smugness, the parroting of the same old cliches after a loss -- the Bangladesh men's cricket team have it all in them to be the talk of the town, except for on-field performances that would have gone well with the aforementioned qualities to make the Tigers an eccentric unit that everyone enjoyed having around.

But when they keep on losing by putting horrendous cricket on display time and again, possessing all of these qualities only makes them a pompous and abhorrent unit that comes off as foolish and ignorant after every debacle.

Looking at how Shakib Al Hasan responded to a few of the questions at the post-match presser following Bangladesh's humiliating series loss against the USA on Thursday would go a long way in proving the above stated notion about Bangladesh cricket.

Read more

Tigers get favourable news on Taskin

When asked why Bangladesh's top order has been misfiring for a long time now, Shakib, one of the most experienced cricketers in the Tigers' line-up, chose to channel his smugness that makes him a hit among his legions of followers as he replied: "I can't say, I don't have any answer for that."

Shakib put his witty side on display when asked if the players on the team are going through some sort of a mental blockade, the answer to which should be known to any one in and around the team. "That I don't know. If I knew then I would have told my team and the results would have been different," he said, smirking.

As he so often does, Shakib may have tried to stun and shun the criticism Bangladesh deserved to face after becoming the first team to suffer 100 losses in T20Is, but what the poster boy of Bangladesh cricket had said rings absolutely true -- none of the players and members of the team management or probably even the board know what is actually wrong with the team. And the most concerning part is, they could not be any less bothered to find out.

Had any one of those stakeholders of Bangladesh cricket been even a little embarrassed and concerned about the Tigers' dire plight, wouldn't someone at least try and find answers and ways to reemerge from this crisis and be bold and sincere enough to admit that this indeed is the lowest point for Bangladesh cricket in the shortest format?

Because losing successive matches against a team 10 places lower than the ninth-ranked Bangladesh in T20Is just before the T20 World Cup surely shows that the Tigers have hit the nadir just one year after they had their best run in the format -- in 2023, Bangladesh had managed to win 10 of their 14 T20Is, including a whitewash of defending champions England at home.

Shakib's nonchalant comments, however, made one thing very clear. It is that the star all-rounder, who is now a lawmaker in Bangladesh, has more than just cricket to tend to. While his tendency to pick which series to play in, despite being one of the handful of players who are centrally contracted in all formats, is nothing new, Shakib could not have made it any clearer that his priorities now lay elsewhere as he remains deliberately unaware of why things are going wrong with the current Bangladesh side.

The way Shakib has been performing lately would make anyone wonder if he truly is invested in propelling Bangladesh cricket anymore. Even discounting how he had been doing with the bat for a while now, the way he managed to chop one onto his stumps in the second T20I against the USA just a ball after the Tigers lost their number seven batter Jaker Ali while needing just 21 off 19 deliveries would bring into question whether he is bothered about the risk at stakes in any particular game for Bangladesh.

Was the pitch two-paced which made things difficult for Shakib at that instance? "Not really, I did not find the pitch to be bad," even he disagreed.

It's not that only Shakib is indifferent about the national team as the same could also be said about the members of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), who formed a three-member special committee to look into Bangladesh's performance following the 2023 ODI World Cup fiasco but never really showed if any good has come off it other than opting for a regulation stance of changing the leadership in all three formats.

Considering how things are now for Bangladesh, pondering how they will do at the upcoming T20 World Cup seems futile. If anything, it is time to mull where Bangladesh cricket is headed from here on.

Today, the Tigers will take on the USA in the third T20I with the threat of a whitewash looming over them, something no one had anticipated at the start of the series.

Could they spiral down further? The omens would suggest a very bleak answer for fans of a cricket-crazy nation.