BANGLADESH’S victory against India in the World Cup match on Saturday was achieved with great flair and in wonderful style. India was so comprehensively outplayed by the Tigers in all departments of the game that at no point in the entire match were India actually in the ascendancy. The scores ultimately may not reflect it, but this was as much of a thrashing that Bangladesh could hope to inflict on India at this stage of our cricket.
   As reported in this paper on March 19, the media in such non-cricketing places as Croatia and South Korea ran stories on Bangladesh’s win, and the British papers, which were so critical of the Bangladesh team during its 2005 tour of England, were full of praise of the way our team played in the crucial World Cup encounter. ‘If this was a surprise, it was the kind of surprise that world cricket had better get used to. Where India fell in Trinidad yesterday, in their opening match of the World Cup, others will surely follow, either at this tournament or ones in the future,’ said The Times. ‘The Bangladeshis, especially enthusiastic and precociously talented, are coming. They could yet win their first World Cup before England do,’ it added.
   ‘And then there were nine. For some time now Bangladesh have been recognised as the largest of the minnows. Now they have moved beyond that. They can live with the big boys,’ the London Observer chimed in. Critics everywhere, it seems, are finally ready to accept Bangladesh as an emerging cricketing power. Everywhere that is, except in India.
   Of course, there was always going to be a very big difference between the manner in which the rest of the world would respond to Bangladesh’s upset victory and the way in which India would. After all, India was on the receiving end of Bangladesh’s onslaught on Saturday, and surely, it would have hurt. Indeed it would be strange if the Indian media and the public were not affected by watching the Bangladeshi bowlers make quick work of their much-fancied batting line-up, or the way in which three Bangladeshi batsmen in their teens tore the Indian bowling attack apart. With so much hype surrounding this World Cup in India, endless hours of television talk-shows and debates and thousands of inches of newspapers columns dedicated to India’s preparation for the tournament, it is no wonder that the defeat to Bangladesh seemed like someone had poured icy cold water over a nation of more than a billion people.
   Having said that, this is not the first time that India, the great cricketing nation that it is, have lost to one of the lesser sides in international cricket. As a matter of fact, this is not even the first time that they lost to Bangladesh, having lost in Dhaka in December 2004 to another spirited Bangladeshi performance, in which Mashrafee bin Murtaza starred as well. They ought to have known that this Bangladesh side, which had defeated New Zealand in a warm-up match just ten days earlier, had the quality in its ranks to cause major upsets, and was quickly gaining a reputation as giant killers. They obviously did not, or maybe did but still decided to ignore the warnings, and that is what makes the reaction of the Indian media and fans, one of shock and disbelief, and their refusal to give Bangladesh any credit for the win so disgraceful.
   Let us start with the coverage on Sony Max, the Indian satellite channel which has the broadcast rights for the World Cup in the subcontinent. Having predicted that India’s star-studded batting line-up featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh would easily score over 300 runs against Bangladesh in their match preview, the presenters, Charu Sharma and Mandira Bedi, decided to start their half-time show, by which point India had been bowled out for 191, by reminding the viewers of a match some 30 odd years ago when a team scored less than 191 at the Queens Park Oval in Trinidad and still managed to defend it. Of course, they were merely trying to keep their fans from losing hope, but perhaps it would have been more prudent for Bedi and Sharma to remind the Indians of the match in Cardiff less than two years ago when the world champions Australia scored 249 against this Bangladesh side and failed to defend it, to soften the ultimate blow that this match would turn out to be for the Indians. However, more than what they had to say, most of which was about how poor the pitch was and how Dravid might have made an incorrect decision after winning the toss and none of which was about how well Bangladesh had bowled, it was the distraught expressions on the faces of Sharma and especially Bedi that was so unprofessional and lacking of class.
   Their shell-shocked faces at the end of the match made it even worse, and Bedi’s feeble attempts to undermine Bangladesh’s win reached an ultimate low when she introduced their regular feature of the match’s ‘one in a billion moment’ by saying that ‘this was a one in a billion match for Bangladesh, so let’s see our one in a billion moment’. Someone should remind Bedi that this was Bangladesh’s second win against India in the fifteen matches played between the two sides; so, at best this was a one in a seven and a half moment for Bangladesh!
   Unfortunately, the attitude of Sharma and Bedi was widely reflected in the Indian media on the day following the match, with most newspapers blaming Dravid’s decision to bat first as the reason for India’s loss, as if the pitch was the real culprit. Going back to Sony’s half-time show, the ‘experts’ made the pitch out to be a demon, one with landmines buried underneath it. Yet, 45 minutes after India got bowled out, when the Bangladeshi batsmen came out to bat and were hitting the Indian bowlers to all parts of the ground, the pitch had miraculously been transformed into a fairly good batting pitch! The Times of India, India’s largest selling daily went as far as to say ‘it [Dravid’s decision to bat first] was the kind of decision which must have prompted the Bangladesh manager to ask the ICC [International Cricket Council] to dope test the Indian skipper,’ implying that the decision after winning the toss was so poor that the Indian captain must have been on drugs.
   All over India’s many internet message boards, fans have blamed coach Greg Chappell, Dravid and, in some instances, Virender Sehwag for India’s loss. The few sensible writers who suggested that credit should be given where it is due, to Bangladesh, have come under attack from the rest of the mob, and have been asked to shut up and leave. On one such site, where a writer identifying himself as a Bangladeshi argued that India should not take the loss so harshly because Bangladesh are an emerging side and there is no disgrace in losing to the Tigers, the writer and the Bangladesh team came under severe attack. The writer was told that he was not welcome in an Indian message board, just as Bangladeshi occupiers were not welcome on the footpaths of Mumbai and Calcutta, and the Bangladesh team was compared to a third rate Ranji Trophy (India’s domestic first-class competition) side, which would have been blown to smithereens by the mighty India if not for Chappell’s faulty tactics.
   India has never been known to be graceful losers, especially in cricket. One remembers well the scenes at Eden Gardens during the World Cup semi-finals in 1996 when the fans decided to light the stadium on fire because India were being thrashed by Sri Lanka. Yet, India should reassess its attitude, both to cricket and to Bangladesh. As far as cricket is concerned, the media and the fans would do well to stop making demigods out of the players, because really the Indian team is not that fantastic and has no real achievements to be proud of since the 1983 World Cup win. It is a team that only does well at home and loses everywhere else. And for the organisers, it would be wise to stop seeing the sport solely as a commercial venture, for commercialisation of Indian cricket has killed it. Is it not a shame that in the six and a half years that Bangladesh has been a Test playing country, the only other Test playing nation not to have invited the Bangladesh team for a tour is India? Even Australia and England, countries which were sceptical in granting Bangladesh Test status in the first place, have hosted our team for Test series, yet India has refused to find a slot for their neighbours because it is not ‘commercially viable’. Maybe now, with them looking to avenge this defeat, the Indian board will want to schedule a series against Bangladesh on Indian soil.
   As for Bangladesh, it is a country that India considers itself as the liberators of and the big brother to. However, our neighbours need to seriously reassess its attitude of chauvinism and disrespect to Bangladesh, for how else does it expect to earn our trust and respect in return? It cannot possibly expect us to live in eternal gratitude and indebtedness while it treats us as the poor cousin. The Indian attitude to playing cricket against Bangladesh is only symptomatic of its wider attitude to Bangladesh as a country. Other than losing to Pakistan, it is losing to Bangladesh that hurts them most, yet why should that be the attitude between two friendly neighbours who share so much in values and culture? Why should India be the last country to acknowledge our ascendance in cricket, and the last country to invite us over for a tour? Why do Indian cricket commentators find it so hard to praise Bangladesh, even when we play against teams other than India, while other commentators cannot stop in their praise for Mashrafee and Ashraful? India should realise that it is not in losing to Bangladesh in a game of cricket, but in the way there are reacting to it, that is such an utter disgrace.

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