2016 Asia Cup: The emergence of the 'Asian Dragons'
The platform is all set for a mouth-watering 2016 Asia Cup T20 final between two of the most consistent and passionate cricketing nations, India and Bangladesh, on Sunday. Thanks to the coming of age of a young and vivacious group of Bangladeshi cricketers in the T20 format, we can hope to see an even contested finale between the hot favorites India and the spirited Bangladesh.
Over the last few days, there have been voices heard that Bangladesh has caused upsets by defeating the much more experienced Sri Lankan and Pakistan teams. Frankly speaking, if we go by the form that Bangladesh has been displaying for the last year or so in their home, not many who understand and follow cricket would have been surprised at these results.
An upset is something that happens once in a long period of time and calling these wins an upset would not do justice to the hard work and the earnest efforts that this bunch of young cricketers, as well as the support staff, has put in.
It can be said that Bangladesh has cashed in on the back of some lackluster performances from both the Sri Lankan as well as the Pakistani teams but it is their performance on the field that has made sure they cross the finishing line without many hiccups.
This is something that the Bangladesh team has had been missing in the past years and in spite of producing some of the best limited over cricket talent in the form of Mohammad Ashraful, Tamim Iqbal and Abdur Razzak, just to name a few, they had quite often than not ended on the losing side.
It is this handling of pressure in crunch situations and rising to the occasion of nearly all their playing eleven, that has caused this major transformation in their game. More importantly they are now not dependent on a couple of players to perform in every match and are ready to share the burden among themselves that has proved to be a blessing for some of the senior players like Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim to relax, thereby concentrating on their strengths and playing their natural game freely.
Spirited group of young boys
Moreover, they have an animated and experienced leader in the form of Mashrafe Mortaza, who gives the liberty to his players to play freely and leads from the front whenever the situation demands, be it a spectacular fielding effort, an important breakthrough with his bowling or a quick fire 15-20 runs with the bat.
By looking at the number of matches played, one might think that Bangladesh have quite an inexperienced bowling attack but when it comes to handling pressure and bowling in crunch situations these young guns have had the better of their opposition on most occasions.
Arguably the best among them has been Mustafizur Rahman who has been simply lethal with his off-cutters and other variations, finding the batsman short of plans against him every single time. Taking nothing away from the other team members, I would like to add that Mustafizur has been quite instrumental in his team’s change of fortune in the last one year.
Saying that, another new find, Al-Amin Hossain, has already impressed one and all with his unorthodox bowling action and a knack of picking up wickets at the beginning as well as the fag end of the innings. In the batting department with the experienced trio of Mushfiqur Rahim, Mahmudullah Riyad, the ever performing Shakib Al Hasan and youngsters like Soumya Sarkar and Sabbir Rahman in fine form, the batting line-up looks settled as well.
With 3 series wins (Pakistan 3-0, India 2-1 and South Africa 2-1) against the top test playing nations in the last year and now such clinical performances in the Asia Cup T20, these Bangladeshi tigers have announced their entry into the top cricket playing nations and if they can continue playing the way they are at present then the time is not far away when they can present a very strong challenge to all the other teams in the upcoming T20 world cup as well.
Simply put, it is yet to be seen for how long can these spirited group of young boys can carry their form but as an ardent sports fan I am loving the competition that they are presenting to some of these top cricket playing nations.