Bangladesh News

The mercury will definitely rise in the country today when a spirited Bangladesh launch their Cricket World Cup campaign against serious title contenders and former world champions India in Trinidad.

The Group B match will start at 7:30pm Bangladesh time with state-run Bangladesh Television (BTV) beaming live coverage from the Queen’s Park Oval, a 25,000-capacity ground which is generally thought as the most picturesque of the old grounds in the Caribbean.

Habibul Bashar’s men left home with a promise to make at least one upset in their group, which also includes ex-champions Sri Lanka, to win a place in the second round in cricket’s showpiece event and their stunning success in the warm-up triangular series and the official warm-up games has intensified the expectation of the cricket crazy fans.

The Tigers suddenly got special attention after their astonishing two-wicket victory against New Zealand in the first warm-up match in Barbados.

After that, they made many believe that they have the potential to beat any side in the world and that their recent one-day success against cricket minnows was not a fluke.

The Indian side, including skipper Rahul Dravid, also admitted that Bangladesh have emerged as serious challengers to the sport’s big names and neither India nor Sri Lanka can now afford to take Bashar’s side lightly.

Banking on players like Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and the skipper himself and taking pleasure from previous record where they have won 13 matches out of their 14 one-day encounters, India will definitely start as favourites.

But the Tigers can also take inspiration from their 15-run victory against their next-door neighbours that to beat India is nothing new.

In that happy-hunting match at the Bangabandhu National Stadium in December, 2004, pace spearhead Mashrafe Bin Mortaza (unbeaten 31 runs and two wickets) and dashing Aftab Ahmed (67) shaped Bangladesh’s first-ever success against the Indians and undoubtedly, the team will be looking forward to a similar act from the two special players.

One Indian newspaper even headlined after the Tigers’ two-wicket triumph against Stephen Fleming’s men: “Will Bashar’s smile sink a million hearts?”. So everybody is eagerly waiting to hear the Tigers roar again in the big show after losing all their World Cup matches four years earlier in South Africa.

It is actually time for Dav Whatmore’s boys to rise to the occasion, not only to take the game into a new era but also to erase the African nightmare of 2003.

SQUAD
INDIA (from): Rahul Dravid (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Dinesh Karthick, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Munaf Patel.

BANGLADESH (from): Habibul Bashar (capt), Shahriar Nafees, Tamim Iqbal, Aftab Ahmed, Saqibul Hasan, Mohammad Ashraful, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mohammad Rafique, Abdur Razzak, Mashrafe Mortaza, Shahadat Hossain, Tapash Baisya, Syed Rasel, Rajin Saleh, Javed Omar.

UMPIRES: Aleem Dar (Pakistan) and Steve Davis (Australia)