On
the sunny Monday of June 26, 2000, Aminul Islam, the captain of the Bangladesh
side that beat Pakistan in 1999, got a call from Dhaka. It was someone from the
Bangladesh Cricket Board. Aminul was living in Portsmouth in Hampshire that
summer, playing in the Southern Premier League. He was asked to drive to Lord's
to be present for the press conference that would reveal Bangladesh as the
newest ICC Full Member and Test team. The cable TV boom had already happened in
south Asia, and one of the stations back home heard Aminul was going to be at
the press conference. They arranged a camera and got him to report it for them.
Aminul
lost his captaincy before the inaugural Test, in Dhaka against India in
November that year, but he was part of the team. There had never been any
first-class cricket in Bangladesh. Aminul prepared for the Test trying to
perfect his leave during the English summer. He learnt the technique by reading
Sunil Gavaskar's Idols and Geoffrey Boycott's manuals. His landlord, the
journalist Andy Ford, used to tell him stories of how well Ian Botham played
even after they took the captaincy away from him. Ford got Aminul a gym
membership, and also arranged for him to net twice a week, a luxury in England.
Aminul's preparation was arguably the best in the team.
Bangladesh
was a limited-overs country then. The only cricket in schools was
35-overs-a-side knockout matches. Clubs, and not regional sides, dominated the
national scene, and they were happy playing one-day cricket. The few multi-day
matches were in the latter stage of the inter-district national championship,
when the divisional champions faced off in three-day games - and here too
sometimes only the final would be played over three days. First-class cricket
reached Bangladesh only after its team had been granted Test status. Sure
enough, in their first Test they looked lost after three days. They gave a good
account of themselves with 400 in the first innings, but by the time India
levelled the scores on the fourth morning, Bangladesh were out of energy and
focus.
"By
day four, we had all forgotten there were another 180 overs to go," Aminul
says. "Our dressing room was a marketplace. Minister is coming, BCB
president, guests are coming, Jimmy [Mohinder] Amarnath [one of Bangladesh's
former coaches] is coming, Gordon Greenidge [another former coach]. Lack of
experience, not just among players, but everyone. The only experience we had
was the three-day matches against England A, Hyderabad Blues etc. We had no
idea what a five-day match was. We played Tests like three-day matches. First
three days we were competitive. On fourth and fifth days we would lose
out."
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