Sports Desk:

Before the Bangladesh national cricket team left the country for their three-match Twenty20 International series against USA and the subsequent T20 World Cup, skipper Najmul Hossain Shanto had said that they were not much bothered about 200-plus scores in franchise leagues as the World Cup would serve pitches where 160-180 runs would be the par, something they were up for.

Well, two games into the series against the USA, who are ranked 10 steps below them – that has also gone out the window, as Bangladesh have failed to hit 160 in either game and have lost both to concede the series.

In doing so, Bangladesh exposed the crack they had been papering over for years, that they are a fundamentally subpar T20 team, and even after the Tigers have turned 18 – legally an adult – in the format, they have not had any form of maturation.

In T20Is, 112 batters have scored more than 300 runs with a strike rate of over 140, and none of them are Bangladeshi. The batter who has the highest strike rate for Bangladesh with at least 300 runs is not even a batter – Mashrafe Bin Mortaza. Only one other batter has a strike rate of over 130 – Towhid Hridoy [131.59].

The Bangladesh team, who were still in denial after the first game, apparently accepted that they did not play well in these two games against the USA, but captain Shanto then stated that it was a mindset issue, not a skill issue.

‘Yes, we didn’t play very well, to be honest. But I think it is a very good opportunity to have another match and execute our plans. I hope we can play some good cricket in the next match. I think it’s not a problem with the skill. We should change our mentality and mindset,’ he said after the match.

That begs a bigger question – why do Bangladesh keep failing if skill is not an issue?

They ‘achieved’ their 100th T20I defeat on Thursday – the first team to do so – and that includes defeats to Ireland [2009], the Netherlands, Hong Kong [at home in 2014], and Scotland [in 2021]. If the skill was indeed there, why do Bangladesh regularly fail to win against lower-ranked opponents?

Even when they beat Zimbabwe four times at home earlier this month, none of the victories were convincing, with the warning signs omnipresent, but Bangladesh refused to pay heed as they papered over them, saying that they had successfully executed the experiments that they wanted to.

The results of those experiments are still blurry, as the only clear results are the defeats, and potentially the lack of effort surrounding them.

When asked about the top-order’s constant failure, Shakib Al Hasan said he did not know the solution. When asked why the team wasn’t playing good cricket, he again said he didn’t know.

Who knows then? Apparently, everybody but the team. The problem is that they cannot do the fundamental thing T20 cricket was invented for – scoring quickly. In 168 matches, they have scored over 200 just six times, less than four per cent. Even if the threshold is 180, they have a success rate of just 9.5 per cent.

On Thursday, Bangladesh needed 26 runs off the last four overs with five wickets in hand – supposed to be a cakewalk in the modern game. They scored 19 to lose the remaining wickets and concede a defeat, and yet, the only thing coming out of the team was that they could not play good cricket.

That can be attributed to the lack of accountability that lies within and around the team. When there have been questions about skipper Shanto’s low strike rate, assistant coach Nic Pothas pointed out that when he bats longer, it ‘goes through the roof’. Shanto played 34 balls on Thursday, and his strike rate was 105.88 – well under the roof.

Before heading to the USA, the Bangladesh camp continuously reiterated that they had a good preparation against Zimbabwe and that it would help them in the T20 World Cup.

It has not, and this is not the first time. Before the 2021 T20 World Cup, Bangladesh used rank turners that were extremely volatile for batting to beat Australia and New Zealand at home, saying that winning always helps.

In that tournament, they lost to Scotland in the qualifier stage and beat Oman and Papua New Guinea to qualify for the Super 12, where they lost all five games.

And how it has been going, there is a there is a high chance that Bangladesh will face a similar fate once they start their World Cup campaign.

At this point, that only seems to mirror a line from the TV series Chernobyl – ‘Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.’