I was truly a layman in cricket before watching the World Cup 1999, where Bangladesh got a victory against the mighty Pakistanis. Afterwards, I became a cricket lover.

I would like to ask a few questions to those who have lost their hopes.

Being Bangladeshis should not we feel happy even for a moment to see our boys posing threat to the boys coming from such countries like the UK and Australia?

Does any developed country consider us as a competitor in any sector like industry, agriculture, IT, garments etc?

Can we afford to throw our cricket players out, those who are at least fighting for bringing pride to this nation?

Those days are not far away when our boys would no longer be the minnows. The Tigers will roar soon.

When they win, we applause and praise but when they are defeated we pour our wrath on the coach and players . Yes, I am talking about our consistently inconsistent national cricket team and our ever-optimistic mind. Their dismal performance in Asia Cup broke our hearts once again and raised many questions. We have never received any frank statement from our captain as far as our batting technique is concerned. However, you don't need to be a cricket guru to detect our batsmen's over-shuffling tendency which enhances the possibility of LBW. Moreover, Faisal Hossain, whose domestic batting average is over 40(!), has awesome feet-movement (does they move at all?) and it unfolds the huge difference in quality between domestic and international cricket. Even after providing adequate facilities, economic security and good coaching-training stuff, the situation has not changed at all. Our scoreboard is still shuttling between 160 to 180 like 15-20 years ago. But why? Our captain doesn't know the answer.

The answer is, if you appoint the best tutor for a dull student, who doesn't have minimum ability or quality to learn, he will never be getting A+. Our cricket team is like a bad student of cricket under a good teacher. In an interview the former Sri Lankan captain, Arjuna Ranatunga, who has the experience of playing in Dhaka League, expressed his concern over our present cricket players' ability and performance. So, it's time we looked after our domestic cricket structure so that we can get players in future with real ability to learn from defeat and experience.

In response to the letter of Md. Fahim Hara (DS 9th August, 2004), I want to make the point that though New Zealand took nearly 18-20 years to win their first Test match, they got very few chances of playing Test cricket unlike Bangladesh has been getting under ICC's home-and-away system. Yes, some 20 years back Sri Lanka was in no position to win the Asia Cup Tournament, but they had some quality players like Arvinda De Silva, Ranatunga, Dilip Mendis, Ashoka De Silva, etc .

But where are our counterparts? When Ranjit Fernando was asked to compare present Bangladesh and Sri Lanka of twenty years ago, he told that Sri Lanka had the capability of putting up stiff resistance in every match at that time but that is not true about Bangladesh.

Another point that I want to make is Whatmore's multi-skill theory. There is no doubt that it needs a match winner (quality cricket player) to win a match. Mini all-rounders jack of all trades, master of none may play some face-saving cricket but will never be match winners.

Abir Rahman, Dept. of CSE, DU