Bangladesh’s U19 World Cup win a watershed moment in times of oligarchy

Bangladesh’s U19 World Cup win a watershed moment in times of oligarchy

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ICC

The moment Rakibul Hasan chipped Atharva Ankolekar to mid-wicket for a single at the Senwes Park, an entire country erupted in unison. For the ignorant world, it might have been just another U-19 final, but for Bangladesh, this was everything. This was their very own fairytale moment.

For cricket has been a sport, watched by millions, adored by many for the sheer thrill that it gives us. It makes you bored to the death at one time while keeping you at the edge of your seat the next - it is a sport like no other. Sometimes, it is music that depends as much on the rests as on the notes themselves, with the intervals taking precedence as much a part of the game. 

Cricket also means everything to the Bangladeshi psyche - if only could I gauge their love for Ilish - that you hardly get surprised reading about people celebrating during endless traffic jams or a man with Bangladesh jersey feeding rickshaw-pullers from a box of sweets or a group of people crowding around a phone, trying to catch the game at a wedding function. It is a country that is mad about the game which often translates to nasty things on a cricket field - like it did yesterday - but you cannot question their jubilation. Like the taste of Ilish, it is 100% authentic, 100% Bangladeshi.

Indian colts might consider themselves unfortunate to have been losing the final, after playing excellent cricket throughout the tournament, but that is knock-out cricket for you. The team with better organisational cricket and the ability to handle pressure comes out at the top more often than not and Bangladesh surely looked like the more sorted team even though India managed to get hold of the plot from time to time. And I am genuinely happy that they did, for it has the potential to transform the sport to a larger scale, something the stakeholders have been crying for a long time with little to zero results. 

It doesn’t even need a deeper look to understand that in the world of archaic dominance, the line has often been blurred with cricket, for its conservative nature, has suffered the worst even though there have been thousands of attempts to keep the soul alive. Call it the normalcy of evolution or the organic platitude of the sport’s appeal, the dominance of a select few has created a stern situation for the stakeholders - fans are very much part of it - to let the game grow beyond the elites.

Recently, Cricket Australia chief Kevin Roberts acknowledged that the game's financial powerhouses needed to work together to ensure that it grows healthier outside the cricket super economies of India, England and Australia. While it was a statement that keeps the yawning gaps that exist between the haves and have nots in the world of cricket at bay, a closer look gives us an existential question which is an indictment of the truism we have been served in the last few years. The game has not only become a "not-so-powerful societal force" but the feel-good stories have also been disappearing slowly and steadily. How many underdog stories do you remember from the last decade? 

In times like this, Bangladesh’s victory has come out as a massive reason to cheer because it has the potential to break new grounds in the Asian nation and give them the confidence that they can actually compete well at the international stage. For all the upsets (Can I really call them upsets anymore?) they have caused at the senior level, it is their inability to seize the moments that has pushed them down momentarily. But it was a Bangladeshi, who had lost his dear sister during the tournament, who kept the flame alive to manfully spearhead them to an ICC title of any kind, which made Mominul Haque, the captain of the losing team in Pakistan, to comment that they can learn self-belief from the Under-19 team. 

On India’s 2011 World Cup win in Mumbai, Vaibhav Vats at the climax of his 2013 travelogue, Triumph in Bombay, noted, "The young women and men, more or less my age, who claimed the streets, riding on the roofs of cars, impressed more on the observer than mere exhilaration. It was as if they were strutting on the world stage, confident in the singular belief that their moment had arrived."

In isolation, it could well have been for Bangladesh, the single biggest holder of the fanbase beyond the elites. The U-19 win has proven that cricket is not a commodity to be manhandled by a select few but as long as it spreads across a mass, it will find its soul by itself. Think of India’s 1983 World Cup win. India had won a solitary match in two previous tournaments but romantically knocked West Indies out of their Lord’s Balcony perch. It was the game that had far-reaching effects, giving birth to cricket’s biggest fan base and a generation of talents who would go on to write and rewrite history books.

While it is easy to go with the flow, the deepest of the thoughts also say the same thing - not the ICC World Cup quarter-final appearance or the Champions Trophy semi-final berth or knocking India out of a World Cup, but this U-19 World Cup win is the best thing to have happened to Bangladesh cricket so far. It will make the other smaller nations believe that if they keep at it, one day, they can reap dividends of hard work, for it will ensure a lesser difference between the haves and have nots and the sport, despite a cynical view presenting it as a danger on the face of adversity, will become the ultimate winner.

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