The ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 was supposed to be a dream World Cup campaign for the Bangladesh cricket team, as many experts and even the players and fans believed that the current team had the capability of doing something spectacular. However, a dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, hard work, and team effort on big stages such as the World Cup.
Bangladesh failed to tick most of the boxes that are mentioned above, and the team were knocked out of the tournament with their recent debacle against Pakistan, where they lost by 7 wickets in Kolkata on Tuesday. This was their sixth successive World Cup defeat out of seven they have played so far.
This failure of a campaign is not just the fault of one person but is a collective failure of every stakeholder associated with the team. The players, coaching staff, team management, and board members— no unity or cohesion was seen among them throughout the World Cup, and the pre-World Cup fiasco, which included veteran opener Tamim Iqbal, did not help the cause much either. It was a disastrous and messed-up World Cup campaign, not only on the field but also outside the field.
A skipper is always someone who would lead the pack from the front. Now imagine, just before going into battle, the leader publicly expressed his initial reluctance to lead the army and announced that he would leave his post after the battle, regardless of the outcome.
The battle will be lost even before it begins. The man who captained the Bangladesh brigade in the ODI World Cup, Shakib Al Hasan, did just that before the tournament, and the consequences of his actions are now for all to see.
Interestingly, Shakib is not the first Bangladesh captain to announce his resignation right before the World Cup campaign. In 2003, captain Khaled Masud announced in the final press conference before the team left for South Africa for the World Cup that this would be his last assignment as leader of the Tigers. The 2003 campaign is widely considered the team’s worst World Cup, as they went winless throughout the tournament and even lost to fellow nation Canada.
Shakib's Bangladesh have at least ensured that they won't be winless by winning against Afghanistan in their opening match.
But since then, the Tigers have played more like scared cats, suffering six defeats on the trot in which they have offered almost no resistance. The worst of the defeats came on Saturday against the only associate nation in the tournament, the Netherlands -- a defeat that forced the usually defiant Shakib to accept in his post-match press conference that his actions before the tournament might have affected team’s performance.
Although Shakib appeared devastated after the defeat to the Dutch, his actions before the tournament showed that he had a premonition of impending disaster.
In the same pre-tournament interview, the all-rounder had also said that he has nothing left to achieve as the ODI team leader and had also indirectly revealed that this would be his last appearance in cricket’s showpiece event when he announced his intention to retire after ICC Champions Trophy 2025.
Not only was Shakib part of a team that had what it took to go all the way, but as the greatest player this country has ever produced, Shakib could have aims to complete his World Cup journey as the captain who led Bangladesh to their first success World Cup semi-finals.
Instead, the 36-year-old showed no ambition while Australia's David Warner and South Africa's Quinton de Kock appeared determined to make the World Cup final special.
After the defeat to the Netherlands, Shakib talked about finishing the tournament on a high but gave no explanation as to how his team would do it.
Shakib's attitude before the tournament reflected the general lack of ambition that exists in Bangladesh cricket and derailed the team's campaign before it even began.
With some cricketers, including Shakib, Mushfiqur and Mahmudullah, stepping into the last phase of their long careers, Bangladesh’s cricket authorities should now really get to the root of the problem that prevented the team from performing up to its potential in the prestigious event and spot the next generation of players who could serve the side well in the long run.
