Year Ahead...

The Bangladesh started 2008 with a lot of hopes of bettering there good performances in the World Cup in the Caribbean in 07. They had done really well t beat India and qualify to the next round of the world cup. They had improved on there performance in the first round and shocked the South Africans in the next round.

There performances started to improve in the home test matches. They won an ODI match against the Kiwis, which is one of the highlights of their national cricket for the year.

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Their biggest shock came when 14 top players joined the rebel “Indian Cricket League”. In order to keep BCCI happy the Bangladesh Cricket Board had ban all these players. They are the second national team to play in the ICL apart from Pakistan. Consequently the inexperienced national side is looked even more inexperienced now.

Sole Warrior

The 24 year old Ashraful, the skipper usually ends up playing the good knock when his teammates fall like ninepins. Their coach, Siddons advised Ashraful to quit the captaincy during the Australia tour, but unlike in the case of Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell, that didn't blow up into a major storm, even though Siddons revealed it to journalists.

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Even though the entire year has been dismal, Bangladesh had there best moments on the field on the last day of the test match against Sri Lanka. This was an unusual test with rest day, fourth day of the test. The rest day was because of the election. There has been a joke going around that authorities need not be giving a rest day because test is going to end with in three days.

A Ray of Hope…

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The Lankans had set a nearly impossible target of more than 500 runs. With South Africans chasing a record total in Australia and Indian doing the same against England, the very meaning of “Impossible” was to change. With Ashraful scoring a century and Shakib and scoring a 96, the Bangladesh was set to chase the impossible target, before the Lankan bowler struck. Even though they fell short of the target, the manner in which they chased the target will keep them inspired to come up with good performances in 2009. I hope the Bangladesh, will come up good performance atleast in 2009.