Tigers' ambition falls flat in execution

'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas', is the famous tagline of USA's casino capital Las Vegas, Nevada. Introduced as a tourism slogan in 2003, this tagline encourages tourists to indulge in the many facilities available in the city without any inhibition and then simply keep mum about their activities once they return to their day-to-day lives.

The closest cricketing equivalent to this, at least for teams from the Indian subcontinent, would be playing international cricket in the Caribbean.

Because of the 10-hour time difference between the two regions, watching sub-continent teams in action in the West Indies is a difficult task, which requires staying up till very late at night or setting up alarms to wake up before the sun is up, and for many cricket fans that's just not feasible.

For the Bangladesh Test team, however, this is a small blessing. Other than the two-Test series against a second-string West Indies side back in 2009 which they won 2-0, Bangladesh playing Tests in the Caribbean has almost always ended in ignominious defeats.

But due to the odd timing, the brunt the team faced for those defeats on social media and elsewhere was comparatively not as severe as most people had not even tuned in.

So, when stand-in skipper Mehedi Hasan Miraz made the shocking call of announcing an overnight declaration in the first innings in the Antigua Test even though the Tigers were still trailing by 181 runs, it didn't make as much of a splash as it perhaps should have.

For one thing, declaring the innings while still trailing is a rare occurrence in Test cricket, and this was the first time Bangladesh had done it. Only two teams – England and Australia – came out victorious after declaring while trailing in the history of Test cricket.

The team management has yet to explain the early declaration but to be fair to them, there was some method to their madness.

Bangladesh were reduced to 269-9 at stumps on Day 3, replying to West Indies' first innings score of 450-9d. All of the recognised batters were back in the hut and the last pair of Taskin Ahmed and Shoriful Islam were in the middle.

So, rather than sending the bowlers in hopes of shedding off a few runs from the deficit, Bangladesh management chose to declare the innings and let their pacers have a go at the West Indies batters early in the day, which would give their bowlers the best chance of picking up some wickets.

This decision of theirs can also be backed by history. As said before, only two teams have ever won a Test after declaring the innings while trailing and both of those wins came against the same team, West Indies, and also in the same place, in the Caribbean.

England were the first team to do so in 1935, when they declared the innings trailing by 21 runs while playing in a rain-affected tacky pitch in Barbados but came out victorious by four wickets.

Then 77 years later, Australia repeated the feat at the same ground, Kensington Oval, when they declared while trailing by 43 runs and won the match by three wickets.

Back to the Antigua Test, Miraz's brave move was not a complete bust as Taskin claimed his maiden five-wicket haul in Tests, finishing with 6-64 as West Indies were all out for 152.

Still, even after bundling out West Indies cheaply, the Tigers were set a daunting target of 334 to win the match and up against the competent pace attack of the home team, Bangladesh's fragile batting line-up once again fell apart.

Bangladesh had to see out only the final session of the day, where they faced 31 overs and lost seven wickets for just 109 runs.

Had the batters put up strong resistance and lost no more than a couple of wickets, Miraz's declaration call would have set up a thrilling fifth and final day of the Test.

But after another appalling batting display, the visitors head into the final day where the only thing they can accomplish is reduce the margin of defeat.

Mathematically, Bangladesh could play out the entire day to ensure a draw or score the remaining 225 runs to win the match. But realistically, their best bet at making history of Day 5 would be to become perhaps the only team in history to declare the fourth innings of a Test and accept a defeat.