So Bangladesh have lost all their super ten games of the International Cricket Council World Cup Twenty20 2016. But it does not seem fair to call this performance utterly disappointing.  

There were obvious moments in every game when Bangladesh were on top of the opposition but then let the game slip away. Bangladesh bowled well, led by Mustafizur Rahman, against New Zealand but then batted poorly; Bangladesh bowled poorly against Pakistan and allowed them to pile a total beyond their reach; Bangladesh batted well to reach a 150+ score against Australia who then found it difficult to topple against a probing bowling attack. And then against India, Bangladesh did everything right until the last three balls when they seemed to have had sudden bursts of emotional disorder leading them to make a barrage of uncharacteristic mistakes and lose the match.

Clearly this Bangladesh team had certain limitations. For instance, this team did not have big power-hitters spread out in the batting order to quickly change the complexion of the game. In effect, it seemed the team was unable to go beyond scores around 150. Bowling line-up, despite being very talented, lacked the control and guile to contain batsmen from scoring runs freely. As a result, every now and then good wicket-taking balls were surrounded by poorly-bowled balls that are easy to hit and score big. Fielding performance was mixed too - some brilliant exhibition of catching was juxtaposed with shambolic miss-fields and drop-catches.

Mashrafe Mortaza’s captaincy was inconsistent too - there was nothing that one could do in not winning important tosses, but lateral thinking or thinking out-of-the-box was largely absent as we regularly witnessed slow thinking in forging a bowling change or reshuffling batting-order. Of course there is never a guarantee in cricket that any certain manoeuvre would work, but innovative captains do endeavour to create opportunities from nothing!  

Much has been said about pacer Taskin Ahmed and spinner Arafat Sunny’s suspension mid-way through the tournament and the way it had dealt a death blow to the team spirit. However, there were many instances in the world of sport when certain absences actually motivated the team to strive further. I remember, the great Australian leggie Shane Warne was suspended right before the start of the 2003 World Cup and despite the loss, Australia won the cup in style eventually; so were the cup-winning Pakistan in 1992 World Cup when they lost their key fast bowler Waqar Younis for injury right before the tournament commenced. Taskin Ahmed’s absence was also coincided with Bangladesh’s main wicket-taking weapon Mustafizur’s return and so the balance of the team could not be said to have immediately hurt. A good spinner’s absence, however, was severely felt although it has been much less talked about as a decisive factor in the media.

Similarly, can the emotional exhaustion after the 1-run defeat against India be the sole reason for Bangladesh’s lack of application in the next game versus New Zealand? Once again there are cricketing examples when emotionally draining and potentially demoralising defeats had actually lifted the morale of the team - Pakistan started off disastrously in their successful 1992 campaign; India had ups and downs early on in their successful 2011 World Cup campaign too when they tied a match with England and lost to South Africa. But, in both of these cases, bad loss did not strike a fatal blow to the performance of the team, rather these teams were able to stage quick turnarounds in their fortune.

In fact, the inability to come back from crushing defeats and transform disappointments into driving force could well be the touchstone that sets apart Bangladesh cricket team from other top teams. What makes some teams better at making comebacks after defeats? Steve Waugh’s Australia, for instance, were led by a determined captain who would almost always anchor the ship when the chips were down, or Ranatunga’s Sri Lanka, led by a confident captain who would always wear a fearless, unemotional and never-say-never attitude. In Mashrafi, we have a captain who has a great rapport with his teammates, and is fast-improving as evidenced in his much-improved field-placings and thoughtful bowling changes. But like other areas of cricket, captaincy is a strategic art, and good captains are fast-learners too. And perhaps more importantly, it is not just about learning cricketing strategies, but also a lot about controlling emotion, using presence of mind, and trying to be on top of the mind-game with the opposition.    

Talking about mind-game, Bangladeshi supporters had a learning experience too throughout the numerous trials and tribulations of this year’s T20 World Cup. Never before had they followed a tournament with such high hopes of beating big boys of cricket. Their team had a good outing in the Asia Cup days before this tournament beating Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and their presence on social media platforms was volatile in anticipation of greater things to come. In the end, however, their team failed to win a single match against the top teams, a question thus arises whether the consolatory but endless pat-on-the-back chants, “Well-played, Boys!” or “Love you, Tigers,” are actually doing any good to the sentimental nature of their following, or is it better for the supporters to rationalise the team’s performance and keep their high hopes in check? Probably the latter.

Dr. Manzoorul Abedin is a research fellow working at University of Cambridge and University of Reading